So, here I am in the grief. Last time, I mentioned I was changed. It was one of the first resulting conditions I could formulate in my mind, let alone articulate in conversation or on the page.

I want to be. I do not want to be the person I was before we lost Lorenzo. After all, what do you learn if you do not change? What’s the point if you do not change?

He was already changing me, of course, from the moment I checked the pregnancy test on somewhat of a whim, while Ryan was getting ready for work one late January morning and we both figured it couldn’t really be that easy to get pregnant. But there they were, the two blue lines, an equal-sided cross encased in a plastic circle. I ran into the next room in gleeful disbelief to tell Ryan what I had always wondered would feel like to say: “I’m pregnant.”

It felt wonderful and exhilarating and other-worldly, even though that other world was buried deep inside me. From that moment on, I started to change.

So that when I sat uncomfortably in a San Francisco bar because it was important to see a friend from out of town, I felt changed.

So that when I felt vulnerable, my first reaction was to protect my son. That parental instincts flare quickly when you know it’s no longer just about you.

So that when I walked down the street and caught my profile in a glass-walled Santiago office building and eyed our changing shape, I felt changed.

So that when I did anything — sat on the couch, boarded a plane, passed through a doorway — I was not alone. I always had company. His. I felt changed.

Now, that path we were walking together, he and I, has split. The metaphoric fork in the road. My feet had been moving beneath me, thinking we were traveling safely along, until suddenly the ground was no longer there, though my feet still pedaled through the long, awake night, desperate to keep us on course. But biology and chance and misfortune were lifting us up and setting us, both of us for a short time, on the other path, the one you don’t let yourself think too much about if you can help it.

Everyone hopes that as time passes, this is getting easier and days are getting better. That is our society’s forward motion: towards “better.” Well, as more time passes, it actually gets harder because my mind knows we are farther and farther away from that point of divergence when the scenery drastically, instantly shifted. That distance is difficult to accept because it means I am increasingly separated from the company we shared.

Sometimes, I even feel two-selved because I can visualize myself continuing on the gleeful path, my belly (you) growing larger, the nursery nearing completion, Ryan and I leaving the hospital with you in my arms instead of a memory box of you. Yes, I was wheeled out of the hospital holding a memory box with my son’s photos and footprints. Yes, I delivered him in the maternity ward where they hung a fallen leaf on our door so the staff who entered knew we wouldn’t be leaving with our baby. Yes, I say “delivered” because I did not give him birth. Yes, I heard the cries of other babies being born that night.

Yes, because it’s winter, there are fallen leaves all around Santiago.

And those are only the moments I picture before imagining the could-have-been of Lorenzo’s life, of his very own path through our world, a world he didn’t have a heart designed for, as Ryan says. What would his voice have sounded like? What about the world would have fascinated him? Where would he have taken after Ryan? Where after me? Where would he have surprised us with his astonishingly unique personhood?

Now I’m on this path, though I still try to claw my way back to the other one when I’m waking up in the morning and accepting the day. But here I am, and I now know:

• You cannot bring ashes in your carry-on luggage, or so the generous, somewhat hesitant man who delivered our son to us in a small white box told us.

• Where the deep compassion I see in some of the most incredible people I’ve known must come from.

• That our son’s sick heart was encased in an otherwise perfect body. That you cannot necessarily see these things that catastrophically change people.

• That we feel old now, Ryan and I. He said this to me at dinner the other night, and I agree with him. I feel “aged,” a word I’ve hardly related to during my 32 years. I look at pictures of the two of us, pictures from not all that long ago, and we look young, happy, and innocent, untouched by this grief. Will we ever be able to look at ourselves again and not see this? I ask, because there are many aspects of what I now know that I don’t yet understand.

February, 2012

• Just how many metaphors involve the heart: speaking from the heart, going straight to the heart, getting to the heart of the matter, your heart being or not being in it, a broken heart, a melted heart, a warmed heart, a heart on fire, heart strings, from the bottom of our hearts, taking heart, having some heart… and now, Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome, which isn’t a metaphor at all.

• That “anxiety” can exist for an infant, and that the neonatologist would have tried to anticipate it to the best of her ability were she to treat our son. That he would have struggled from the moment he tried to take a breath. So much pain. So much solitary uncertainty. That his one right ventricle would have had to be turned into a left ventricle to pump blood throughout his body instead of just to his lungs, from then on sending 30 percent less oxygen to his brain. That he had no visible aorta, another risk factor. That he would have needed a minimum of three open-heart surgeries by the age of two. That is, if he continued to survive or be eligible for those surgeries. That they did not present a heart transplant as a viable option. That I found out later that babies who do receive heart transplants need another by the age of 35. That there was always the possibility, despite all this, of stroke, of blood clot, of sudden death. Surgery… sudden death. Chasing a ball… sudden death. Sleeping… sudden death.

• That staying away from alcohol and caffeine, taking prenatal vitamins, giving up sushi and soft cheese and salami, drinking orange juice, moving your chair away from smokers… that all of that does not guarantee the health of your baby.

• That there comes a time for a “new normal,” whatever the fuck that means. That before you step into its light, you first sink back into the pre-change old normal for a time. For me, that has meant going all the way back to warm college clothes (big sweatshirts and wide-leg jeans) and the music I loved first (mostly classic rock and even Dave Matthews Band) because nostalgia is comforting.

• That the stars can appear brighter, the birds more miraculous, the grass sharper on your nose because you are seeing them all through your own world-splitting hurt as well as your pup’s fresh eyes. That you were expecting to see them through the eyes of your child.

Ruby <3

• That the grief counselor was right: “Shock is protective.” Now that the shock is gone, this leads me to believe she will also be right about what happens when the active support recedes… when your friends and even your family go back to their lives.

• That my husband and I owe it to Lorenzo to take care of our hearts, our healthy hearts.

I still do not know many things. For instance, what do you really ever say when your baby has died? What are the words and where do they come from? Is this still coherent? Does it even matter?

Where were all the words coming from before May 28? Were they coherent? Did it even matter?