Joy can so easily be destroyed !

Am sitting here with tears in my eyes.
My wife just called from the doctor's office. We lost the baby...
I have to write this now - while my thoughts are a whirlwind. Forgive me my disjointed rambling but if I am to be true to my art, I must type and type fast through my tears. You may be reading this well after the fact, though. It may be a while before I publish this.


It's amazing to think that something so small and so scarcely with us could have such an effect on my life. Just a few days ago, we read a book on birth and pregnancy where they had a small photo of an embryo with a 'real size' caption beneath. So small. So small and so helpless, it turns out.

I find myself reanalyzing and reconsidering my position on so many things. Always a pro-choice person, it takes a certain amount of detachment to hold this position. You have to believe that an embryo is not a person; you have to believe that life comes later. But how do I reconcile that feeling when the embryo is something you want so desperately. When it's absence tears rifts in your soul; when it's presence became so central to everything you did.

Are we responsible for this?
They always tell you that you should wait until the second trimester to share the news. Did we tempt fate by enjoying our moment prematurely? A sadness for me is that our next attempt will be muted in our celebration because of this set back. Will we wait the 3 months? Will we hold off on talking about names? Will we fear making plans?

Right now, I want nothing more than to hold Eileen. For every pang of agony I am feeling, hers must be tenfold. I feel my grief more through her - more so because this pregnancy was the greatest gift I could give her and it was so cruelly taken away.

Everything is back in stark perspective.
Getting a job. Getting published. Finding a house. Trying to get stable. All of it means nothing.

The darkness is returning now. Dark thoughts follow you throughout your life. They so easily divert you from what is important - forcing competition upon you, infecting you with envy, causing doubt, forming divides...
Did we wait too long to try? Is this the normal course for people like us who gave seed to their ambition and comfort and delayed having children? Is this the cosmos's way of humbling us? Are we paying for something?

The test is in stealing light from the darkness - and, as always, it is Eileen that brings me back from the edge. If nothing else, her capacity for love is disarming. Love the dark times, they give perspective to the light!
Eileen:   Oh well. Guess we have to start trying again.
Sanjay:   Okay. Let's get to it.
Eileen:    At least one good thing from this is we know our plumbing works fine. We just have to keep trying.