A Baby’s Bassinet

She’d been putting it off for weeks now. Just closing the door and pretending the daunting task did not actually exist. She’d walk past the room and glance sideways towards it, always asking herself if she might be able to handle it today. No, maybe tomorrow, she whispered. Though on every tomorrow, she’d do just the same. But here she was now, taking deep breaths of iron, a small wrench held much too tightly in her grasp. Though the temperature was mild, sweat poured from her, drenching her before she’d even begun the real work.

“Here we go” She managed to whisper to herself though her throat was almost swelled shut.

It took her another few moments to focus and slow the beating of her heart before she entered the room. Behind that thin wooden door laid her deepest rooted fears. Her greatest regrets and her biggest disappointments. Her shame and her overwhelming agony. In the shadows loomed all these things, hidden away behind the rocking chair and nestled neatly between the teddy bears. Their glass eyes staring back at her echoed these things through the empty room. She cursed herself for not asking John to remove them.

He had tried to do anything he could to better this for her, offering more compassion than he ever owed her.  Sure, such a tragedy affected him too, but never as much as it would always slice through her heart. He hadn’t lost someone he’d held to his chest, someone who had grown inside of him and who had depended on him for all of his life. He hadn’t lost a piece of himself.

So, although she refused to let him touch the crib, that was hers and only hers to deal with, she had asked him to remove some of the worst things from that room. That blanket she’d tucked her baby boy beneath just a few weeks ago, the pacifier she’d gently pulled from his mouth late that last night, the half-full package of diapers still laying on the floor, waiting. She couldn’t face those things. Not now, not ever. But she had forgotten to mention the stuffed animals, and he must have missed them in his assessment. So they sat, lonely and forgotten on the farthest shelf, staring at her, judging her.

“It wasn’t my fault” It seemed absurd, but she felt it necessary to defend herself to them. Still they stared on, never once forgiving her. “It. Wasn’t. My. Fault.” She felt the words grind against her teeth as they left her throat, though she couldn’t stop them. Those were the words she had to say, had to hear. Again and again. Until maybe they became real.

She closed her eyes for a moment. Deep breaths.

Another step forward and there it was before her, the wooden structure of a baby’s crib. Her baby’s crib. On first impulse, she slammed the heavy wrench down against the top rail. It cracked, though not breaking completely, and she took another few swings to ensure it was completely snapped in half before she stopped.

Contain yourself, she thought. This wasn’t meant for her anger. It was meant for memory, for acceptance, for closure.

So where to start?

She grasped onto the two splintered sides, tracing the grain of the wood with her fingernail until she reached the far ends. There on one side she felt around a corner solidly attached to the metal sliding mechanism and on the other a locking piece for moving the side up and down. It was there she found the first bolt. She grasped it between her fingers feeling each of the sides on the cool metal hexagon individually with the pads of her pointer finger and her thumb. It took a few tries then, to adjust the wrench to the right size with those wobbling fingers, but within a few agonizing moments, there it was. The thing rolled across her palm, and she could do nothing to stop herself as that hand shot out to her right side and flew into the baby blue walls. By the time it hit the ground, she had wrestled in those emotions once again, even sighing as she noticed the small dent it left in the plaster.

Tomorrow she’d deal with that. Tomorrow.

Today was this.

Right now.

The side of the crib now came loose with a few jerks. When it did, she held it there for a moment, feeling the rough wood and the cold of the metal running up and down the sides. She brought her hand up and stroked it across the broken plastic rail at the top, the place where her boy had just learned to stand, grasping on for dear life.

Placing the large piece next to her, she started back with the crib. Within an hour or two she had the sides off. They laid in a heap beside her. She turned to them, wiping the new layer of sweat from her brow. She ran her hand over the top piece, brushing it softly across each slat. On one, a sticky residue caught her attention. Holding it up to where it had fit into the frame, she realized it would have been the perfect place for those smooth little fingers to grasp from where she would lay him to sleep. She held her own hand, made coarser by the sands of time, up to it and felt his fist grip around a single finger. Ghost fingers were never the same, though.

 On the second to last slat, she paused again at the space where he sometimes liked to poke his tiny foot out. He’d happily show off his bare foot after he somehow managed to wiggle it out of his sock. She would tickle it whenever she saw it peek out and it would bring him to the loudest giggling fit she ever heard. That sweet sound echoed around her now.

She picked herself up tiredly, though she realized she had only been at this for at most three hours now. She still had at least that long to go. And a lifetime of memories to deal with after that. Sighing, her feet pushed her towards the structure, now merely a bed frame. She thought back to that day at the furniture store, when she had insisted to John to by the convertible crib, the one that would become a toddler bed when the baby had grown out of his crib. It would save money, she argued. They could be prepared ahead of time, something neither of them had ever been much good at. She choked on her dry laughter. How vain it seemed now. How simple.

He agreed happily then, so here she was with a toddler bed and never would she have one to fill it. All that was left to do was continue her disassembly, though it pained her so. She knelt by it for a moment and her fist struck out against the soft mattress where he had lain. Then she sunk farther to the floor and pressed her nose against the flannel sheets. The chalky smell of baby powder brought him back to her for a moment. Though lifting her head, he hid away once more.

It was there that John found her. He hadn’t expected she would set out on this endeavor today. Really, he hadn’t expected it to happen for a long time, and he was unprepared. As quickly as he caught sight of the open doorway, one which hadn’t moved and inch on its hinges for weeks, he rushed in. placing his leather computer bag beside the doorway and sidestepping the littered pieces of the bed. She stared much too blankly at the white sheets. Her face had grown much too pale. All he could do was sink down beside her, hold her close, and struggle for words that did not exist.

She did not turn when he entered, or even once he wrapped his arm around her. Really, all she felt was her own shame, when he comforted her.

“I don’t deserve it” She muttered.

“No, you don’t” She could tell he’d misinterpreted her words completely, but it brought him comfort to think she was opening up about it.

It wasn’t the death she did not deserve. Though it felt so unfair, she knew that was nature. No one had a choice about who would live and who would not, be them eight months or eighty. But he could choose to love her through it. He could choose to put up with her. He could easily choose not to. Though she’d beaten his chest with her flailing fists, though she’d shouted and retched into the wee hours of the morning, he pretended to understand. And though not a single tear came through any of it, he pretended that wasn’t insane. John sat with her. He heard her pain. Though not a word he said could calm her, he gave plenty. Though they both knew it could heal nothing, he continued to fix bandages where stitches were needed. It comforted her to see him try, but at the same time it made her heart ache deeper, broke it farther in two.

“Can I help you?” He asked, picking up the wrench before she could answer. He was referring to the crib, though she could hear something deeper in his tone.

She ripped the tool straight away, “No.”

With new resolve she set back to her work, tossing the sheets in a heap over the teddy bears’ eyes. The mattress was propped against the wall. She found more bolts to pluck from their places. John sat and watched, wishing he could say something to stop this mad struggle. What could he do, though? What authority had he over a dead baby he never had a claim to? He had no such experience as a father, hadn’t the time to grow a connection with the helpless thing before it was gone. His job was as a husband of a grieving wife. With no right to mourn with her, no place ripping apart the bed which carried that boy to his final rest, he could only watch. He could only mutter what he thought to be comforting and assume her silence meant he at least hadn’t said something wrong.

Then, as he was just nodding off to sleep, he heard it. A sob, which in a house mourning such sadness might not seem so out of place, actually caught him off guard. Especially as he wiped away his sleepiness and caught a glimpse of the scene before him. Rather than piled neatly as they had been, the side pieces and posts laid littered across the room, hiding away almost all of the beige carpeting except for the patch beneath his own feet. The entire framework had been taken down and all that was left was this boneyard of wooden boards. Then he saw her.

She sat where the bed had been. Still she clutched the wrench in her right hand, but in the other was something else. He didn’t know what at first, but her gaze had said it all. The white fabric about the length of his thumb made sense. A sock. His. One he must have escaped from and proudly tossed aside in his favorite game. One that had probably brought on a tickle session from his mother and a good twenty minutes of pure, innocent laughter. One that had been lost and forgotten long before. One that was empty now and would stay that way. She clutched it in her palm, clasping and unclasping her fingers around it.

And on that white, a small speck suddenly appeared. He looked up at her face, the trail of a tear scarring that perfect cheek. It was the first of many that night. And the first of many for a long time to come. He wanted to cry at the sight of it. Yet he also wanted to cheer. Finally, something. Something real. If she could cry, maybe eventually she could talk. And maybe eventually she could heal.

Maybe he was too optimistic. Maybe he had to be.

She looked up at him and smiled, dangling the thing from her fingers.

“You don’t deserve it.” He said again.

She repeated, “I don’t deserve it.”

This time she meant just what he did.

Then came the horrible sobs. The ones which would echo into the night. They tore through his nightmares, and soared up toward the heavens, sneaking through the clouds to where a baby boy was sleeping softly.