Bring the Pain

Ed Note: This might not be a post for the faint of constitution. It might simply be TOO MUCH INFORMATION. Proceed with caution. I'm only writing for myself today, anyway...

One horrible thing about the whole experience is that it has deeply compromised my love of white sheets. And I so did love my hotel-style white sheets!

I prefer an entirely white bed, matter of fact. With a downy duvet and heaps of white-cased pillows. I love the crispness of it. I love the simplicity of it. I love the refreshed feeling I get from a freshly made all-white bed -- like trees after rain. I love the ease of mixing-and-matching my white sheets. The luxury of a clean, pressed white pillowcase. The dramatic pop of all those pieces against a painted wall.

It's the "pop" in fact, that I can't get out of my mind. That jarring, gut-wrenching contrast of colors. I was groggy and nearsighted, waking up in the middle of the night to find myself unsettled and in pain, my legs gliding across each other in some sticky ooze. When I threw back the blankets -- even before I found my glasses -- the first thing I perceived was the intensity of the stain on my white sheet. It was red. Fire engine, Radio Flyer, Valentine-heart red in a big spreading oval underneath me. Red, just like fresh blood.

Later, when I had cried and raged and become very, very meticulous, I tried to stain-stick that red stain out of existence. I used Shout. A bleach pen. I washed in hot. But the stain never completely went away. Where the middle finally came clean, the outlines of it held on to an ugly yellow-brown ring -- sepiatone proof of just how unsentimental life can be. How cruel, really, to catch us unawares, time and again, only to tell us that we have had hurts that will not wash away.

One day, while scrubbing the sheet in front of my kitchen window, for at least the fourth time, I suddenly became paranoid that a passing car could see into my house and somehow discern what I was doing at the sink. Not wanting anyone to know, I wadded up the wet sheet and threw it away. Never looked back. No great loss, right? I eman, I have other sheets. And, really, doesn't one white, queen-size fitted sheet look very much like another? Probably the way one dead fetus looks very much like another. I hope one day I can forget the most careless words uttered in my dire medical moment. "Just like last time, there's no heartbeat. And no limbs this time, only an empty rod with a head."

After the mattress pad completely dried, I made it my job to reassemble the bed. I flipped and fished through every linen shelf, looking for sheets the right size but not in white. I found an old floral set I once loved and never had the heart to purge. A big, friendly print of cottage roses and daisies on blue chambray -- all the better to hide any later signs of loss. The floral sheets went on and have remained, through multiple washings, our bedding for weeks.

Eventually, I'll return to all-white sheets. They'll be crisp and clean and they'll further lift my lightening mood. One Saturday morning, maybe sometime soon, I will remake my familiar, beloved bed and pause when it's done to take one deep breath in. I'll imagine a faint pine scent and hope for the best. But I do fear... with a small, pushed-aside, mostly-suppressable fear... that some part of me will have to take a look every morning thereafter, scanning my white sheets for a sign of unforseen tragedy and half expecting a yellow-brown outline of all that is raw and painful in my life.