This post is for Ryan.

 

 

We recently celebrated two years of marriage and we’re coming up on four years together. Since we met in a bar on a Friday night in San Francisco, we have fallen in love in a way that does not insult or damage or disrespect, but strengthens and perceives and accepts. We have made it through a year of international long-distance, gotten married, set up our first home in Santiago, explored Chile and more of South America together, adopted a dog, been robbed, visited dozens of beaches, found meaning in music, made up words and a lot of stupidly hilarious jokes, played a respectable amount of Scrabble, reached over in the night through earthquakes, eaten A LOT of burritos, and learned, painfully at times, what each other believes in.

 

 

Because what often feels spread like a blanket over all of this is that we lost our first child. That experience trumped everything and everyone around us and set us on that island together. And just when we thought things were going to be okay, we lost again.

 

 

But I think we’re starting to get back in the water and swim around a bit. And if I’m not inclined to, I think I’m going to force myself back in. It’s going to be terrifying much of the time, doesn’t at all diminish what stranded us together or the subsequent grief, but still somehow has to happen.

 

 

Recently, I caught up with a friend who has always felt more like a sister even though we may only get to see each other every few years. Time can go by, as can respective tragedies and blessings, and we still communicate in a way that heals. She has been to an island similar to ours and so I trusted her when she told me something on the exact day I could hear it: I need to try to pull myself up, for myself and for Ryan.

 

 

I wouldn’t have heard it eight months ago, when everything profoundly shifted inside and out, or two months ago, when it caved in again, but I could hear it then because of something Ryan had said the night before that showed he’s been just as worried and scared as I have.

 

 

Of course, I’ve known this. But he’s also the reassuring and hopeful one, the one who rights me when the grief has knocked me over, the one who says–definitively–that yes, we will have a healthy child and yes, things are going to be okay. He believes so strongly in us that little obscures his view of the future. I believe in us, too. But it’s harder for me to believe–definitively–that a healthy child born of my body is our inevitability. So, I need his hope, his unshakable belief in this child and in our future.

 

 

My friend reminded me how much he needs that from me, too. I knew she was right because the second Ryan’s hope faltered, mine surged towards him, like a wave he could ride. Mostly, he needs me. Certainly not the me I was before–that’s impossible once everything changes–but more of her. I need more of her, too. As another mom, who has in fact been to the same exact island we have, put it: “I think that inclination to ‘pull yourself up’ is the natural process of grieving. You get to the point where you say, ‘Okay, that was horrible and I will never be the same but I still have to be.’ ”

 

So, I swim out a little farther than my usual circumference. I duck dive under a wave. I’m scared, but I surface. Then I do it again.

 

 

Somedays, maybe even most days, I still may not. It’s warm on the sand and the other creatures are usually in plain sight. But it’s also where the weight is. It’s only in the water that you can float. So, I’ll try to do that more, for myself and for Ryan. After all, I have to remember that there were days when it was hard to believe I’d ever find him.