• Brick
Having missed most of the conference events (I hadn't even made the bookstore before they started tearing it down) I limped into Dr. Silver's lunchtime keynote address, Sillbirth: Where are We and Where are We Going? A highly technical examination of stillbirth and its many diverse causes (fortunately our plates were cleared before his Power Point presentation began to include what we in the community refer to as "road accident pictures") it was nevertheless fascinating ... and there was something else.
Maybe it was that particular Q&A from the night before, the one Toni was involved in. Maybe it was my physical state. Maybe it was just the repetition of factors and the result of these factors that put me in mind of the brick. The brick outside CPT, just one of those commemorative bricks organizations use to pave the outside of their venue for fund-raising purposes. In CPT's case, we are lucky Calvin's brick is close to the street and away from the door, the ones that are most traveled, or are most likely to have salt on them during the winter months aren't for the ages, and Calvin's probably isn't either.
But what gravestone is? And that's what it is, his stone, it's the only one he gets that's only his. And I saw for the first time in perhaps ever, or certainly with any perspective or distance (as I have done this show for four years now) the shape of my story. From terrifying loss, to this one commitment to finality. Something killed my first child, and one day I had to find out that was true - and one year later I was laying flowers at a brick with his name on it.
The enormity of that year, what I tell in my play, what I hit people over the head with when I tell it, it all came back to me, sitting there, my head bowed, listening to statistics. I forget who I was prior to all of that happening. I do not remember what it was like to expect that first child, only everything that came after. But that afternoon I felt closer to him than I have in a very long time.
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