Shortly after the birth of my first child, I became pregnant again. I didn't know that I was pregnant. Emily was born in December, and this was only April. My husband was off at work, and I was left at home with his younger brothers and sisters. That morning, I'd begun to bleed, and I was relieved, thinking that I was finally starting a period for the first time since my daughter's birth.
But that was not the case. The baby--no more than two months along--was expelled into the toilet. In shock, I flushed. The bleeding became worse and worse, and soon I realized that I had to go to the hospital. Without a fetus to show, I was not believed, not seen as an urgent case. I still remember sitting on a chair (the exam rooms sere full) and hearing the blood drip to the floor. Finally someone realized that I was in bad shape and found a vacant room. One look was enough for the doctor to realize that I was in trouble. I was hemorrhaging. The doctor gave me a d and c, and I lay in the hospital bed alone.
My husband was at work, and the only way to reach him (he was a farm laborer) was through the radio. I called the Spanish-language station, and they broadcast that there was an emergency and he was needed at the hospital immediately. He came shortly after that, and he was informed that I had given birth prematurely. He asked where the baby was. It was only then that I realized that when he called home, he didn't get the news that our baby was dead.
"It was not being able to see the baby, not being able to say goodbye," He said. He was tortured by the idea that maybe somehow it would have been different if he had been there. His character changed. He started drinking, and he said that during that period he was an alcoholic. He couldn't get his inadequacy out of his mind. And in all of this, he didn't say one word to me. I suppose that he knew how bad I felt, and he was trying to keep me from his grief. But his attempt to save me actually did the opposite. By not speaking with me about his feelings, he made me think that he wasn't that upset, that it was just me. Even though we had two other children, things weren't the same between us for many years.
When you are going through trauma, you have to communicate. I know you don't want to. But you have got to speak to your partner about what you're feeling. If you don't speak, even the most intuitive spouse won't know what you're thinking. Remember, that person is going through their own grief, and they shouldn't be expected to read your mind to be able to understand yours.
When we lost Tommy, it was different. We shared each other's grief. I saw him hold our son, talk to him, and cry over him. After the funeral, he spent a good deal of time in the garage making bullets. I asked him why, and he told me that he could see the cemetery from there, and he always put shiny big balloons on Tommy's grave so he could see them when he worked. In a way, he felt that he was with his son. I understood that he needed to be alone, but at least I understood why--it wasn't about me, it was about our son. That was all I needed to be able to understand. Communication saved us much pain, though there was far worse pain to come.