Content warning: Pregnancy loss, parent loss, grief
There was the first time, the August when the doctors told me at 22 weeks that I was going to have a miscarriage but I didn’t believe them. So all through the hot sticky days of August, I took my prenatal vitamins and threw them back up again, and I held my swollen belly and prayed. Every day all August long, until finally, at the very beginning of September, my body let go and I miscarried twin babies in the bathtub.
Then there was the August, the one that seemed to be too good to be true, when I told my dad on his birthday that I was pregnant and it felt like these hot humid days were finally being redeemed. The whole pregnancy, something just didn’t feel right, but my bloodwork said over and over again that everything was perfect. Until it didn’t, and I woke up and the hot sticky feeling wasn’t a sweaty August night, but blood.
There was the August when I married my first husband, and all of our friends came to Alaska to celebrate. And then there was the August when we were in the middle of a complicated, painful divorce, and we took our youth group on our annual camping trip anyways. I remember the hollow feeling inside was a lot like the hollowness when you’ve just bled out a baby, again. Losing something you never thought you’d lose. Hurting in ways you never knew a person could hurt.
Then there was last August, when we said goodbye to my dad, letting his ashes go in the ocean he’d loved so much. Knowing he’d never hold a baby of mine, or the book I’d published just months too late. My dad believed I would be an author since I was four years old and I dedicated my first story to him. Getting COVID on the way home from the funeral felt fitting- I didn’t want to be living life in August, anyways. Staying under the covers felt like the only way to navigate a world without him.
Is it any wonder I hate August so much? August, the month of shore trips and peaches and summer reading in the hammock. August, the month of blood and loss and heartbreak. August’s oppressive, humid air weighs down the outside of my body, and its memories weigh down my heart. August is the month when my garden beds overflow with ripe tomatoes and zucchini and I feel too depressed to gather them, so they rot on the vine.
Garden Harvest
In case you’ve ever wondered, it’s true that something as seemingly invisible as the temperature or humidity in the air can activate your nervous system, can remind it of times it felt unsafe. For me, the humid dog days of August point me not only to some of the worst losses of my adult life, but to my childhood abuse in North Carolina, where the sticky days are more pronounced even than they are here in PA. My body remembers, and it’s no wonder that every August I have to work extra hard to remind myself that I am safe. To take extra time to talk my parts through that I will always protect them now.
A friend shared this week a photo of her garden bounty, and wrote simply, “August means Abundance”. For some reason, those simple words resonated deeply with me. “I’m going to make that my new August mantra”, I typed in the comments. If you look up the definition of abundance, the first one is “a very large quantity of something”. A very large quantity of pain, maybe. Of heartache, of loss or trauma. And also a very large quantity of love. Of seeing the hands and hearts of those who sat with me through each of those joys and losses. The reality that our grief is always in direct measure to how much we’ve loved. My garden bed is full of overripe tomatoes because I planted and tended seeds and sprouts all spring and summer. Our hearts hurt so much when they are emptied because they felt so good when they were full.
Every time I’ve grieved, I’ve come to the same conclusion: This grief will not keep me from loving again. Every August, may the abundance of heartache remind me of the abundance of love my life has held, and does hold, and will hold again. May I come to not fear this month, but bless what it represents. August means Abundance.
