Stories of Grief and Grace
By Becky Morquecho
@beckymorquecho
Content warning: this essay references pregnancy loss.
It’s the third week of April, and as our dot on the earth tilts closer to the sun, warmth and light pour through the kitchen window more than they did just a week before. A teardrop prism hangs from the metal lock above the glass pane, and tiny rainbows dance from its light on the white brick walls. I’ve never seen them here before, this time of day. I hold my five-year-old daughter, bathing in the color while light bounces around the room. I soak up the beauty of it all, even as my heart and body bleed. At this moment, I wonder if someday hope might be brave enough to return.
***
I open the car door and fall into the driver’s seat. When I turn the key, the orange fuel light blinks on the dashboard. Clenching my stomach and sobbing between wails, I somehow make it to a gas station.
“How’s it going?” the cashier at Mobil asks me.
How do you convey the nightmare that after a decade of trying to conceive, your six-week-old fetus is gushing from your body as you swipe your credit card?
What are you supposed to say when your head is swimming and your heart feels numb? Where are the words to describe how you’re unsure of your own existence, as your eyes wildly scan chip bags and protein bars and scour the metal shelves for Tylenol. How did I end up here? I wonder.
My mind flashes back to the emergency room where I laid like a mummy in a hospital bed with a sterile blanket covering my body. I tick through the details: Pee in a cup. A poke in the arm. My legs, wide on the cold, silver table as the ultrasound probe searched for the fate of my story. The doctor’s black shoes at the bottom of the sliding curtain. I braced myself. “There’s no sign of pregnancy,” she said.
I crumbled my discharge papers up like junk mail before I threw them away. All I wanted to do was get home. But the gas light came on, so here I am at Mobil, filling my tank and trying to find something to take away the pain.
“Pretty good,” I tell the cashier.
***
My daughter—who arrived in our family by the beautiful gift of adoption—brushes her teeth, goes potty, and climbs in between her pink bunny sheets and midnight blue comforter. She scooches her pillow to one side and scoops her matted puppy, Ezra, into the crease of her elbow. I turn out the light and snuggle in next to my girl.
I’m grateful for the dark. It’s hard to keep up a facade when the sun is blinding and everyone is smiling. I let my lifted cheeks and tears fall. My prayer is quick. It’s just for her; I don’t really feel like talking to Him.
Hot tears soak her pillow as I choke on lullabies.
I finish singing and tell her I love her. And then, in the dark of her room and the warmth of her bed, she rolls over to face me. She moves closer—her nose practically touching mine—and whispers, “I just want to snuggle close to you.” And my precious girl, who knows nothing about the baby or the bricks of grief suffocating my very breath, senses something. She wraps her arm around my shoulder, and we lay there together, silent, in the black of the night.
***
All of a sudden, I’m starving. I drive to Vons to buy a Perfect Bar. As the double glass doors separate to my left and right, a barrage of carnation pink and metallic mylar Mother’s Day balloons slap me in the face. How had I forgotten?
The hunger pangs flee; instead, the ode to moms makes me want to vomit all over the shiny, waxed floor.
I take a right past the flowery ensemble and head down the same worn stretch of supermarket I always take to get to the ginger kombucha and peanut butter bars. I grab my usuals and try not to make eye contact with the ungodly heap of silvers, golds, and pastels on the way to check out.
But before I get to the register, I spy a small refrigerated display cooler to my left. It begs me to come closer.
Next thing I know, the cashier is scanning my container of seven-layer bean dip, and something resembling joy trickles through my veins. I glide back through the double glass doors and smirk at the oddity that sour cream, shredded cheddar, black olives, and refried beans have made me feel just a little bit more alive.
I take the win for what it’s worth and eat it all.
***
I pull up to the parking lot, get out of my car, and fall into my friend’s arms.
“I’m not doing okay,” I say. But she already knows.
It’s only been a few days since the last doctor’s appointment. This was the one where the nurse injected a cancer treatment drug into my hips to make sure the ectopic pregnancy didn’t rupture and cause internal bleeding or worse, death. But it’s okay for my baby to die?
We walk slowly along the winding concrete path as she pushes her newborn in a stroller. She listens. She cries. She leaves space for silence when it comes. Because sometimes acknowledging emptiness is the deepest form of friendship.
Before we go our separate ways, she opens her trunk and lifts the lid of a red and white cooler. She pulls out a carton of cold brew, a tray of tacos and another of brownies, and then hands me a fuchsia bougainvillea—my favorite—in a terracotta pot. I weep all over again. Because of her thoughtfulness. Because of the tragedy of it all. Because she’s choosing to check out of her troubles and to-dos and tag in with me and mine. Because she begs God on my behalf. Because I can’t bear to say his name.
***
“Mama! Stay there! Don’t even see what I’m doing!” She instructs me, as I stand in the kitchen slicing strawberries. She disappears to her room for five or six minutes and returns with an index card covered in dark pink hearts and “I love you mom” written across the front.
“They’re all your favorite colors!” She beams.
They are.
We decide to have a spontaneous Mother’s Day girls date: Starbucks, Home Depot, and a quick trip to the grocery store. Nothing unordinary. But as we buckle up and head down the gravel driveway, she goes out of her way to listen and love. She spurs on silliness just to make me smile. She shares words, steeped in emotion—which are often few for her—that remind me I’m known and seen.
I buy myself a pothos plant and ask Jesse to hang it from the ceiling of our laundry room. I dig up overgrown yuccas out of the dirt backyard—it’s free therapy, really—and hurl them over the fence, making room for whatever it is we decide to do with the empty space. Holes gape in our yard and in our hearts. We sit on the back patio, wearing oversized sun hats, eating sweet, dark cherries, and gulping ice cold water in our coral summer fun cups. Someone must have been praying for grace for today.
Because she’s here.
***
I hear singing coming from the amphitheater behind our campsite in Yosemite, and it pulls me in. As I wander through the meadow, I can make out the words to “How Great Thou Art,” being sung so beautifully. I stop in awe for a minute, staring up at the iconic Half Dome—standing tall and mighty. The pines reach for the sky behind the girl singing.
The last weeks have been difficult, as far as parenting goes. As far as most things go. It’s hard to be your best self for your daughter when you’re piecing yourself back together, and I’m feeling drained and defeated.
But as I stand in the sweeping grasses, listening to the old hymn, the greatest sense of calm washes over me—the only real sense of peace that exists. I’m having a hard time pursuing God in this season. But these unexpected surprises—like church in Yosemite—tell me he’s not giving up on me.
***
It’s 6:20 in the morning and I let our goldendoodle puppy, Archie, out of his crate. We cut through the living room, kitchen, and laundry room, and out the back door.
The orange sherbet colored cat darts from his cozy spot on our indigo patio chair as we step outside. Archie chases after him. The July air is thick with humidity, but a cool wind whips through my hair and the oak leaves. As I stroll around the back yard, guzzling up the air, I watch the mountain breeze make our gigantic sunflowers shake their hips.
The morning is unfolding just how it always does.
But as I head back toward the patio, I look up and gasp: a perfect rainbow is draped over our home. I didn’t even know it rained.
And I guess that’s the beauty of life.
You wake up, you let the dog out, you eat, you play with your kids, you wash dishes, and then one day, nature, or God, or a stranger’s words stare right into your soul. A nudge to keep believing. A wink from heaven. A promise of hope in the midst of the ordinary.
Dark pink hearts carefully drawn on notecards and fuchsia bougainvilleas in terracotta pots. “How Great Thou Art” bouncing off the granodiorite of Half Dome. Seven-layer bean dip. An arc of color, light, and love diving down through heavy stratus clouds and a cerulean sky.
I grab my phone to take a picture. I want to believe it. I want this proof that God didn’t forget about me—that our dead baby leaves him weeping, too. Proof that regardless of what the day—or the future of our family—holds, he is fervently chasing after my weary heart.
I walk back inside. Back to regular. Back to making pancakes and saying “good morning” to a miracle girl with the deepest coffee-colored hair and eyes. I kiss her soft cheeks and can’t help but again notice the warm light smiling through the kitchen window where the prism hangs. It hits the crystal just right. Dozens of tiny, vibrant rainbows dance on the white brick wall while an unmistakable bow of hope beams over our home.
P.S. If you liked this essay, check out our podcast, Grief and Hope.
Guest essay written by Becky Morquecho. Becky is a wife to Jesse (yes, just like Full House), an adoptive mama, an adventurer and the host of the We Are Free podcast. She loves fuchsia bougainvilleas, Mediterranean salads and swinging in the hammock under the oak tree. She believes there is beauty and goodness just waiting to be discovered and writes about it often.
Photo by Jennifer Floyd.