Married at 24. How ludicrous. How ridiculous. How absolutely necessary, when your grandmother, who has never seen one of her grandchildren get married, is dying, quickly and painfully. Do not underestimate the power of a dying Portuguese grandmother and strictly Christian parents with immovable ideas about intimacy and love. I continued in my lifelong and suffocating tradition of people pleasing, and was married underneath the arms of an oak tree in the early fall. I felt stiff with hairspray and an ill-fitting dress and shoes that were too small, and I worried that I wasn’t glowing or radiant enough a bride to satisfy the crowd of family. I never look at the pictures.
And now, my mother is fading from sight from the brutishness of chemotherapy, and I worry that I should have a baby immediately so that she can experience grandmother-hood before she dies. I think these thoughts while brushing the fallen-out hair from her shoulders and I don’t want a baby right now, but I am surrounded by death and sickness and sadness and grief and the idea of embodying a vessel of new life is vaguely tempting. I could lie around and become swollen with growth, and I could be everyone’s touchstone of hope, and I could maybe, just maybe, lighten everyone’s load of grief just a little bit. I could birth a hope-baby. But with two separate cancers in the family this year, three deaths, one shotgun wedding, and a dozen other small tidal waves of disappointment, a piece of me worries that I could miscarry and everyone would just grieve more and it would be my fault for adding to the mountain of sadness.
So what is one to do? Turn twenty-five quietly, almost silently. Mourn the loss of one’s younger self, who thought she understood death, who held in her hands the still bodies of miscarried babies, but who had never held someone’s hand in a hospital room and wondered Will this person, who shares my blood and has known me my entire life, die tonight? Will I have done enough?
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