Trigger warning: Stillbirth.  Nope-out while you still can.

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I don’t have great words to explain this.  Little isn’t expecting a child anymore.  She delivered stillborn last week.  I spent Thursday to yesterday with her and her husband.  It’s pretty horrible.

I keep thinking in this dumbfounded shock, Little’s baby died.  Right away, the school marm-ish voice in my head – the one that usually slaps me out of my anxiety What If dithers – snaps, “Don’t imagine the worst, Natalie. Stick with the facts.”  For a split second I’m relieved, thinking, Oh yeah.  Right.  Ok, ratchet down your panic and remember what really happened.  And then I realize the worst is what really happened.

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Little is having bad nightmares about when she went into the midwife’s for a sonogram check.  How the midwife was so friendly when they started the appointment, and when the sonogram check started, the midwife turned away from her.  In the silence, waiting, all the fear of feeling the atmosphere in the room change crept in on Little – the absence of the swish-swish-swish of heartbeat through the speaker, the silence of small-talk from the midwife.  When the midwife turned back around, her face was so changed, Little says it was one of those old fashioned puppet shows, the kind where the doll has a happy face painted on one side and a monster’s face on the other.

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It’s been pretty bad on my mom as well.  You may remember it’s been an ongoing fight between my siblings and our mother about getting help with Dad.  My mom has been insistent about doing it all herself.  Guess nobody plans for this kind of emergency, but there was no back up plan about what to do with Dad.  It was two days between knowing the baby was dead and delivery, and JFK, if there’s ever a time you need your mommy, it’s probably that scenario.

In the end, my mom decided to go to Little and leave my dad by himself, calling in family reinforcements as she got on a plane.  Even calling in all favors for Middle and other relatives to come in and take care of my dad, Mom was able to stay with Little four days before my dad fell apart.

For all you in this dementia boat with me, I cannot stress strongly enough: Have a fucking back up plan of what to do if the primary caregiver can’t be there.  Prior to this week, there was not a scenario I could come up with that swayed my mother’s opinion she would never put my dad in anyone else’s care.  I can’t tell you how much she is suffering about that decision now.

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I had a Rust Cohle* moment in the car that first day, after I’d dropped my kids off at sports.  It actually started when they were still in the car, and we were driving South on the freeway, and I was busy holding it together because kids.

Anyway, in my rear view mirror, an ambulance with lights flashing slowly gained on us.  I pulled into the slow lane, thinking it was kind of unusual – the hospital was the other way.  Anyway, I successfully dropped off kids and got stuck in construction-related traffic jam for 10 minutes.  With the sudden privacy and forced stillness, I got busy losing my shit a smidge.  I yelled at God, out loud in the emptiness of the car.  Specifically, what I said was, “What does this mean?”  because WhatTheEverlivingFuckIThoughtYouLikedMe.

It became a thoughtless mantra as I got out of traffic and made it to the freeway on-ramp.  Still yelling, I started merging onto the freeway to go back North.  My attention would have been focused on the Northbound lanes, except for the flashing lights of another ambulance, exact same make and model as the first, going Southbound.  Like a glitch in the matrix.  I mean, I’m sure there are a dozen logical reasons two identical flashing ambulances going the same direction.  But it felt like it meant something.

So, because I was looking across the highway at the ambulance, I happened to see a motorcyclist (wearing all black, black helmet) pop the Most Magnificent Wheelie I have ever seen.  Going 60+ mph the freeway.  In front of a fricken lights blazing ambulance.  This was no 45 degree wheelie.  His motorcycle, and he himself, were perpendicular to the earth.  Handlebars to his breastbone.  I slowed, grimly convinced I was going to witness this guy fall backwards and die.  The laws of physics demanded it.

He continued on his strange way until he was beyond where I could safely crane my neck to see him.

The most fucked up thing is how much it felt like a Sign From God.  The whole thing crinkled at the edges of my understanding with goose-bumps and strange chills.  If it was an answer to my question, I have no fucking idea what it could have possibly meant.  Maybe it was just a function of stress and of wanting to believe there was some answer to an unanswerable question.  Like I needed it so bad, the chemicals in my brain provided a sign out of any sensory input available.

But mostly I’m afraid it was a sign from God, and the message was, “Hey, it doesn’t mean a fucking thing, kid.”

*”Yeah, back then, the visions, yeah most of the time I was convinced… Shit… I’d lost it. But there were other times… I thought I was mainlining the secret truth of the universe.” – Rust Cohle