NOT FORGOTTEN

The Republican attacks on funding for Planned Parenthood have ripped open an old wound for me. I have never dealt with or received services from Planned Parenthood or any other organization that provides reproductive counseling to women or families. Even so, I felt as though these mostly aging white males and I were at war with one another.

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The Wife and I suffered two pregnancies that ended in miscarriage. Two children never to be born. Two children who died late in the first trimester. Two children never, in some sense, known, although loved.

The Child and I found ourselves at Woodbine Cemetery on a winter day filled with sun and cold. We found ourselves at the Good Samaritan bench for those who have lost children to miscarriage or stillbirth. We paused and stood in the sunlight and the cold breeze, the sting of both letting us know that we were alive in a realm of the dead.

"Why are we here, Dad?"

And then the explanation of lost siblings tumbled forth.

"Well, I'm glad they're dead. I don't want brothers and sisters."

I felt rage rise within me, rage that was already present and manifest as I thought of out-of-touch old men with money and position and influence telling women what they would not and could not do with their bodies, claiming a moral high ground because the issues they were attempting to legislate would never affect these same old men. They were distanced by power and wealth and gender.

I paused and let the raw honesty of The Child wash over me, flow and then ebb away again. I stood firm against its waves.

"Let's not be glad they're dead," I finally spoke in a quiet and calm voice. "You can be thankful about being an only child, but don't be glad that those who would have been your brothers or sisters are dead."

---

The Child had as much right to The Child's thoughts as I did to mine. I had to honor that, but in a truthful and gentle way that also expressed the pain that I felt when people said things about those two children that they didn't have any right to say.

"It's all for the best."

"God has a couple of angels in heaven now."

"You can try again."

"Well, at least you already have a child."

In those moments, I am usually quiet as the words "Fuck you" come to the forefront of my thoughts and I hold them back at the locked gate of my clenched teeth and white lips.

---

The Child, if anyone, besides The Wife and I, does have a right to speak of these two lost children. They would have, and perhaps do, influence the life of The Child in ways known and unknown.

---

Still.

---

We stood for a few more moments in the sunlight and winter wind staring at the memorial bench, next to one another, silent.

Then, I spoke. I spoke of what those two children meant. About possibilities and joy that turned to dead ends and sorrow. About how our life as a family, as individuals, would have been different, without knowing how, without defining to what extent.

I spoke in language that The Child would understand but that also conveyed what I felt about life and death; lost children; abortions; reproductive health care for women; gender inequalities; loving the neighbor as one's self, which means that one must love one's self first.

"I'm sorry, dad."

We stood there for a few more moments.

"I know you are."

I am too.