The Space Between
My heart races inside my chest. My blood pumps loudly, whoosh whoosh, whoosh, inside my ears. My breath is heavy and labored as I frantically rummage through the top drawer of my nightstand, shuffling paper, flipping through photographs, and squinting at the label on an old prescription bottle.
Searching.
For what, I don’t know, but I’m wild with terror. I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve forgotten something very important.
Then I wake up.
I look down at my hands, still gripping random slips of paper grasped in my sleep, and let go.
“I’m having that dream again,” I sigh.
My husband moans gently, as I slide back into our bed, pressing my warm body into his. “Your baby is fine, Melissa, you didn’t mess up,” I repeat softly and rub my newly pregnant belly as I drift back to sleep.
***
When I was a child, playing house with my friends, I was always the mother. I had eight children, five girls and three boys. They were all imaginary except for one, my beloved green-eyed Cabbage Patch doll named Irma. Irma and I became friends in my final foster home. I carried her with me everywhere, holding her close, whispering, “I love you” over and over into her plastic ears. I fed her breakfast, combed her hair, dressed her, and changed her doll-sized diaper.
I even wanted to change my name to Irma when I was adopted. My new mother and father laughed when I told them this. “She’ll stick with Melissa,” they politely told the judge. But at four years old, the seeds were deeply planted.
I wanted to be a mother someday.
***
At the age of two, I was removed from my biological family due to abuse and neglect. My mother suffered from a debilitating mental illness, ran away from home when she was thirteen, and looked to sex and drugs as her savior. My father was her dealer and pimp. I bounced around from one foster home to the next until I was eventually adopted at the age of four.
Sensitive and empathic, I often retreated inside my mind to escape the anxiety plaguing my heart. Many nights, though, my mind became a battlefield. I had nightmares so vivid, I would wake myself up screaming and crying, disoriented to my transient surroundings. I remember the housekeeper in my final foster home wrapping me in her arms, rocking me back and forth, singing lullabies in my ear as I slowly drifted back to sleep.
Hush little baby, don’t say a word, momma’s going to buy you a mockingbird.
Not long after I was adopted, my nightmares returned. Safely tucked inside my lavender bedspread with Irma, I would wake up yelling for help night after night. Initially my mother would run to my room and stand in my doorway, her large shadow looming over me.
“You’re okay Melissa. You’re home now,” she’d say.
But these middle of the night visits continued and eventually my mom grew tired of my nightly terrors. She stopped running into my room altogether. So I did what any other four-year-old would do—I started going into her room instead.
“Get in,” she’d grumble as I crawled over her body and nestled my tiny frame between my parents. My parents! Their cool waxy sheets covered my trembling body and it wasn’t long before I drifted off to sleep again, swaddled in their security and love. But after awhile, my mother grew weary of her nightly visitor yet again and would irritably bark at me to make a bed on the floor instead.
So I did.
Feeling betrayed, scared and confused, I soothed myself to sleep on their bedroom floor.
***
I married my husband when I was 25 years old. My nightmares became a distant memory until our wedding day as I watched my adopted father huff and puff walking me down the aisle. During our father-daughter dance his lips turned from salmon pink to deep magenta as he struggled to keep up with our slow two-step waltz. His battle with emphysema intensified, and I knew the end was near. I didn’t feel ready to say goodbye to him yet. I knew I never would.
But ready or not, he died a year and a half later.
And my mother died soon after him, leaving me orphaned for the second time.
***
Afraid to fall asleep at night following their death, I would wait for my husband to fall asleep first. Once the snoring commenced I would gently creep my hand over to the side of his neck to feel his pulse. I loved feeling the steady, tangible, reassuring rhythm of his heart, Lub-Dub, Lub-Dub, Lub-Dub between my fingers. But sometimes I would accidentally startle him awake.
“What are you doing?” he’d ask.
“Feeling your pulse,” I’d reply shyly as he drifted back to sleep.
“I’m still alive,” he would whisper while my heart burst with gratitude.
***
Not long after my husband and I settled into our first house, my mother came to visit me in dreams.
I’m in the closet of my bedroom folding clothes when I turn around and see her. Mom, what are you doing here? I ask, surprised. I came to be with you, she says gently, then places her arm around my shoulder and adds, so you won’t be alone.
My body collapses into her fleshy embrace; I inhale her scent of wild moss and fresh jasmine mingled with the smell of cigarette smoke and Folgers coffee.
We fold clothes side by side, talking about nothing in particular. I stop her mid-sentence and say Mom, I’m so glad you are here, and she smiles at me, her plump lips widening into a fat, gap toothed grin.
Once the clothes are neatly put away, I peer into her green eyes and timidly ask, Will you stay a while?
Only a little while longer, she offers.
I walk out of our bedroom and down a long hallway, where my father greets me.
Hi Daddy, I smile up at him as he wraps me in his arms. His oxygen tank has vanished as well as his barrel-shaped chest, a hallmark of emphysema. I want to stay wrapped in his embrace forever, but soon he lets me go and starts walking away. I follow him to a large white, wooden door. Everything is going to be okay; he pauses and then adds, Let me show you and slowly opens the door.
All I can see is an endless cobalt sky, laced with gauzy, white clouds.
I turn back to look at my father, but he is gone.
***
I lie on our couch as the golden afternoon sunlight streams beautifully through our living room windows. My husband places his hands gently over my taut 37-week belly.
“Did you feel that?” I squeal as our daughter rolls and kicks inside of me.
“Oh my God!” he shrieks with excitement.
It’s been several months since I’ve had nightmares about losing her. The happiness she has already brought to my life feels heady and dizzying, like an amazing dream I never want to wake up from. I’ve begun to depend on her steady, consistent nature with each kick, jab and hiccup I feel. I know logically she is just practicing her breathing, stretching her arms and legs as she grows, but sometimes I like to think it’s her way of telling me she is okay; she isn’t going anywhere. Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes, it’s these quiet, little moments that whisper, “Trust.”
For so long, I could only look at my future through the lens of my past. The death of my parents, my fear of abandonment, my inability to trust, impacted every aspect of my adult life. Loss colored everything I saw. Now, I know the deeper we love the harder we grieve and running away from love won’t spare me the inevitable pain that loss brings.
Love endures.
As I embark on this new journey, awaiting the arrival of my baby girl, I want her to know my love for her is boundless.
That even in death, we will always be connected as we are right now; our hearts beating in tune, our bodies nourishing one another, our lives impossibly tangled in the space between fear and love, nightmares and dreams.
Guest essay written by Melissa Bauer. Melissa lives in Milton, Georgia with her husband and two chldren, Lily, age 4 and Hudson, age 2. A former nurse turned stay at home mom, Melissa has been writing on and off about her journey through grief, loss, and healing since the death of her parents in 2010. An avid reader, podcast junkie, and mindfulness advocate, she is passionate about living authentically and with gratitude. She values connection and the best compliment someone could give her is an honest 'me too.' She can be found on Instagram.