He didn’t come home last night. Or if he did, it was after I finally surrendered to exhaustion and fell asleep, and he made sure to be gone again before dawn.
I don’t know where he is or when he’ll be back. I stopped asking those questions weeks ago, because the answers never came.
It’s getting harder to find the energy to get out of bed. I never imagined simple actions like getting up and making the bed or even taking a shower could be so difficult. That I’d have to mentally prepare and urge myself just to do these things.
If I had the option to close my eyes and go back to sleep I would. But then I’m trapped in my head. I’m forced to agonize over the past month and the tragedy that’s struck our lives when it seemed like we were just reaching our happy ending.
At least when I’m up, I can distract myself—or exhaust myself enough that I’ll eventually be too tired to relive what’s happened again.
I’ve relived that moment enough times to last me a lifetime. I’m still not sure how or what or why, and I’ve spent a lot of time wondering this.
Not just to myself or to doctors but even to God. I’ve never been the most religious person, but loss has often left me asking the same question.
When I lost Dad and then when Eli passed. Now again.
Why would this happen to us? Why would it happen tome? What have I done to deserve this? What did my precious baby, who was innocent and defenseless and had an entire life ahead of him, possibly do to?—
My heart aches so deeply, it’s almost unbearable. It more than hurts to breathe as I close my eyes and take the breaths slowly.
One at a time as if the process is so complex. But really I’m just that broke down.
At some point, I find the strength to drag myself out of bed. I cross the room to the windows and wrench the curtains apart, the morning light too bright and blinding.
It feels unnatural in the wake of what’s happened. Springtime when the season couldn’t feel more like winter.
I move through the rest of my morning routine on autopilot. Brush my teeth. Wash my face. Avoid looking too long at my reflection because the woman staring back at me has sad, hollow eyes and a grief-stricken heaviness to her face that no amount of concealer can hide.
The hallway stretches before me as I make my way to the kitchen, dragging my feet. My gaze remains fixed straight ahead, avoiding the door to the left. The same room I’d spent recent weeks so excited to decorate.
I haven’t had the heart to go inside. So it’s remained frozen in time for now, a half decorated space for a precious boy I never got to meet…
Dr. Gong tried to explain it to me afterward, her tone gentle and apologetic. They’d found an unknown substance in my bloodwork—something they couldn’t identify, and that had spread through my system before they could fully analyze it. They didn’t know what it was or where it came from.
What they knew was it affected my baby and his heart had suddenly stopped.
When I was sent home the first time, they didn’t even realize he was in imminent danger. I didn’t even know he was gone until after we returned to run the other tests Dr. Gong had suggested.
Despite everything they tried, they couldn’t save him. He was already gone, lost within a few minutes.
No closure. No answers. Just grief with nowhere to go.
It feels maddening knowing he was inside me and I couldn’t help him. That he just slipped away when that same morning he’d been so alive. Kicking and squirming in my belly and making me smile.
I’ve tried to grieve with Jin, hoping we could share the unbearable weight together. We could navigate our way through it… if at all possible.
But he won’t let me in. He’s become a ghost—disappearing for hours or entire nights, returning with blood on his clothes and detached energy.
When I ask where he’s been, he deflects or says nothing at all. He refuses to go to counseling or to show his grief. Any time I reach for him, he turns away.
It’s as if our son didn’t just slip through my fingers, now Jin is too, and I don’t know how to hold on anymore.
Mom’s already in the kitchen when I pad into the room. She’s made coffee and eggs, the only one of us who has truly tried to be uplifting in this messy storm we’ve found ourselves in.
At least she does her best—her sadness is hardly concealed, even as she does what mothers do and tries to be my rock.
“Have some, Moni,” she says softly. As I slide into a chair at the table, she walks the plate of eggs over and then caresses my curls. “You skipped dinner last night, remember?”
I give a hapless shrug and stare at the plate of eggs, no appetite to be found.
