Trending
[Editor's Note: October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month]
I live in a valley between two ridgelines in the heart of Amish County where most of my days are spent outside digging in my garden while listening to the sounds of farm cows mooing and horses neighing. For me, nothing feels more like home than hearing those sounds while feeling damp compost and soil between my fingers and watching tree swallows fly across the fields to the neighboring tree line. My life from spring through fall marches to the beat of gardening sheers clipping off vegetables and fresh flowers for harvest from the garden beds in my backyard and the bubbling of boiling water in my water bath canning pot on the gas stove in my kitchen.
There was always one thing missing from the orchestra of my life: the sound of children. The padding sound of little feet running laps around my kitchen island and grabby little hands snatch cookies from the baking sheet I left on the counter. I wanted so badly to hear joyful giggles as snap peas were stolen off vines and cherry tomatoes got nabbed for munching as we walked hand and hand through the garden. To answer the innocent questions about seedlings and insects as we explore what all we were able to grow together, both big and little. I didn't know then that the space in my dream symphony to be filled by the sounds of children might always remain empty, to be filled by only silence. But the silence is something I came to know very well.
"I'm sorry, there's no heartbeat." Those are some of the most difficult words a woman can hear in her lifetime. I remember hearing those words on a sunny day in July, in the middle of an obstetrics office where I sat with my husband. Before that, I never imagined what it might be like hearing those words, the idea of a miscarriage being something horrible that happens to other people sometimes, but not something I thought would ever happen to me. I didn't know how common of an occurrence a miscarriage is. I didn't know that I most likely had multiple women in my life that had experienced them but suffered in silence, not talking about what they lost or how it felt. The silence is what I remember the most. The silence of not hearing a heartbeat on the ultrasound machine. The silence of my husband putting his hand on mine but not knowing what to say to make it better. The silence of my reaction to hearing those words come out of the doctor's mouth. The silence was the worst part, especially when I had previously filled my life with sound, both the real sounds of nature and the sounds that only existed in my daydreams.
Unfortunately, the silence I felt sitting in that doctor's office followed my husband and I home. I shut myself off from the outdoors, from the fields, the animals and the vegetable plants I loved so much. I spent the next several months hiding away in my house, living through one day to the next in a manner that felt much like one of those old silent movies, lacking sound and color. My garden plants became overgrown from lack of tending and summer vegetables dropped to the ground and rotted, while the seeds for my fall crops got left in their packages, never to be planted in the rich soil that I religiously tended. I did only what was required to maintain the facade of normal life at a surface level, staying silent about what I was experiencing while the words "I'm doing fine" became a regular lie that left my lips while visiting with friends and family. I was good at it, the pretending. Only my husband saw what was really going on, the random times I would burst into tears at the smallest reminder of what could have been or the way I avoided contact as much as possible with any pregnant woman we saw. I was resigned to live my life void of the things I loved because it was less painful to not be reminded of the dreams I once had for my life and my garden.
When Thanksgiving time rolled around, I still had not managed to emerge from the cocoon of sorrow I built around myself. A holiday that I used to find such joy in as our entire extended family would flock to our home for dinner, was no longer something I looked forward to. As I finished baking my usual holiday Apple Pie Cheesecake and started mashing the freshly boiled potatoes, I heard something that made my dormant heart wake up; the sound of my eldest nephew crying as my sister and her family walked through the front door. No, a child's crying was not one of the sounds I had dreamed about, not that anyone has good dreams about a child crying, but it was a sound none the less, a sound that fundamentally changed the trajectory my life. It suddenly occurred to me, just because I didn't have my own child like I had dreamt, didn't mean I couldn’t find some joy in teaching others about nature and the world around us. And so, my three-year-old nephew gave me a gift that holiday that I didn't think I would ever feel again, hope.
A week later, I found myself staring at a dusty box of seed cell trays left abandoned in my garage the previous summer and instead of walking away from them, I picked them up. I planted my first seeds of the season that day, Lisianthus, a flower that takes a long time to bloom here in zone 6. A flower which at that point in time, reminded me much of myself and my journey into the garden again: slow to progress but well worth the effort once it finally blooms. My husband became just as invested in my adventure back to gardening, graciously agreeing to my request to install a larger terraced vegetable garden made of stone block on the grassy hills beside our home. Meanwhile, my old vegetable garden became home to hundreds of cut flowers, my dedication to the child we lost and the hope instilled in me by my nephew. The saying "I might not be able to grow a baby, but I can grow plants," became a mantra for this new phase of my life. Something to remind me that my ability to nurture is still there, even if it’s not the way I originally dreamed.
Today, I once again spend my days in the sun, digging in compost and soil and tending to the young plants I grew from seed. I listen to the music of the outdoors, the sound of tree swallows chattering, the cows mooing and the horses neighing while I harvest the peppers and tomatoes that I continually grow too many of, though my husband enjoys the multitudes of canned salsa I make from them. I spend my weekends making Instagram reels that teach others to grow flowers and vegetables in hopes they too may find joy in gardening. In the afternoons, I get regular visits from my nephews which always bring a smile to my face. I find happiness in watching them pick out what flowers they want to use in a gifted bouquet for their mother, in lifting them up in my arms so they can pick cucumbers from the top of my obelisk trellises and in the sound of buzzing bees that I continually remind them to look at but not touch. In the end, I guess you could say that gardening healed me, along with some support from my husband, the vibrant sounds of nature's orchestra and the voice of a little boy who calls me Aunt Hillary.
•••
This article was previously published in "In Her Garden."