Wrist Bracelets

When we came home from the hospital after losing the baby, I clipped off Mary's in-patient wrist bracelets before putting her to bed for the night. Exhausted myself, I tossed them into my end table as I peeled off my clothes and crawled under the sheets. Ever since that night, those bracelts have stayed in my end table. It's not that I can't get rid of them, or that I'm keeping them as a memory of what we went through that night, it's just that the timing wasn't right.

This whole topic of Mary's wrist bracelets came about as I was running today. Typically, when I run, I let my mind wander to deeper issues. Sometimes I think about getting laid off and how awful that was. Other times, I muse over how I'm going to arrange my surround sound speakers to get the optimum performance out of them. However, as I rhythmicly breathed 1, 2, 3, 4, my thougts drifted to those bracelets. Why did I keep them in my end table? What good will come from having them? Aren't there better things to remember our first baby by, like her ultrasounds? I pondered these questions, trudging along in the afternoon heat, and slowly, like a runner slows as he approaches a busling intersection, the answers started coming.

For me, the bracelets represent an old way of thinking, one that is more simplistic and innocent. Even after the raw shearing of my reality that occured when I was released from employment in Pittsburgh, I still felt as though life would return to normal. More specifically, I believed that my expections of life would return to normal.

But, once the baby that was was no more, the darkness of sadness and grief fell heavily upon Mary and I like a wet, gray wool blanket, and something irrevokable changed in me. I didn't go crazy and start talking to apprations, nor did I lose all hope for the world; the change that occured within me revolved around my expectations of what life has in store. My belief that, by doing good, good would be done to me, fell to the ground slowly just as Mary's clipped braclets fell. My schema of the world around me shifted forever. And yet, I still wanted to hold onto something from before the time when the roof came crashing in.

Hence, the wirst bracelets. Although they are from a very dark and dreary time in my life, somehow, in some way, they represent the expectations I once held onto so dearly. And honestly, a small part of me may not be ready to give up on those out-of-print beliefs.

As I mulled these things over, the miles passed by quickly. Rounding the last bend to our apartment, I returned to the bracelets with two final questions: Should I get rid of them? And if so, when? My response was a simple one: Yes, but not yet. As time goes by, the wounds will heal and and the scabs will mysteriously disappear. Once all that is left are a few scars and some weighty opinions, I will most likely attempt to return to a more rosy schema of my life. When I am presented with that opportunity, I want to hold those bracelets as a father would hold his newborn daughter's hand, and says so soothingly and comfortingly, "It will be ok. Don't give up the good fight. Everything will be ok."

Will I believe myself? Perhaps. Will I act upon the hopeful reconciliation between what I want to beleive and what I have experienced? Most likely. And if I do reconsider my previous worldview, perphaps then, and only then, I can clip the bracelets around my heart, the ones that identify me as another patient in need of respite from the suffering experienced.

As I reach the door to our apartment complex, I realize that my run was now over, but the questions and thoughts revealed during that run will last well into the future. Not only are Mary's wrist bracelets in that end table, but maybe, if I look long and hard enough, I may find my own snipped bracelets alongside her's.