Haunted by a Hospital Bag |
Issue 9
|
|
“I’m going to make her a scrapbook,” I announced to my husband.
“Are you sure?” he questioned, “When are you going to have time for that?” “I’ll have time,” I responded confidently. We were closing in on the end of our newborn daughter's two month NICU stay. Lucy was finally coming home. In preparation, I began collecting all the items from her hospital room that she’d accumulated over the past eight weeks. I wasn’t sure what to do with it all at first but I knew I didn’t want it thrown away. A scrapbook was the obvious answer. Armed with my new purpose, I promptly ordered a pink scrapbook, a fresh set of markers, and special double-sided tape from Amazon. In the days leading up to her discharge I made sure to take a lot of photos of her last days in the hospital; envisioning how the scrapbook pages would jump to life with my hard copy photos. I snapped pictures of her room, her favorite nurses, bathtime, and feeding time. With our stay coming to end, I desperately wanted to document it all. A place I couldn’t wait to escape, was quickly becoming a memory I was afraid to forget. I meticulously kept and organized every item I deemed as valuable from her room. I started with the obvious, carefully peeling cards and notes off the walls, mindfully avoiding any rips or tears. I gathered the large name sign, made by a kind nurse, that hung on the door to her room that read “Lucy's Lounge.” It had been the first thing I saw each day when I arrived. I carefully removed it from the large glass doors and gently folded it up small enough to fit in a folder. I delicately cradled her one week old footprint stamped in the shape of a rocket for the Fourth of July and her tiny handprints as the petals of purple flowers. Tearing up at the memories and also the loving effort from her nurses. I gathered it all. Once I started I found it more and more difficult to stop. Originally only planning to take the art and keepsakes, I found myself petrified to inadvertently leave something meaningful behind. I took her hospital bracelets and her blood pressure cuff. I took the leads that tracked her heart rate and the band that secured the monitor for her oxygen levels. I took anything that wasn’t nailed down; like it was check out time at a fancy boutique hotel and I needed all the tiny soaps. Each day I added more items to the keep pile. Nothing was off limits to me. The key cards we used to get in and out of the NICU, our ID badges, the paper measuring tape they used to measure her head growth, the metal pins they used to help move her jaw, a baby blanket, a NICU onesie; I gathered it all in a large, white hospital bag that read “PATIENTS’ BELONGINGS'' in blue lettering on the side. The plastic hospital bag swelled with papers, baby items, and various medical supplies I seemingly couldn’t live without. “What is she going to do with the scrapbook?” My husband asked suspiciously one day as we were leaving the hospital. “I don’t know, look back on this time since she won’t remember any of it,” I paused. “She can show it to her friends and make people uncomfortable at show and tell,” I said with a smile and a shrug. Honestly, I wasn’t really sure either. I wasn’t sure I’d want to relive these days with a scrapbook but also didn’t want to move through life like it never happened. I was torn between forgetting it completely and immortalizing it forever in cardstock and glitter pens. |
EMMA NICOLAS lives in Cincinnati, Ohio with her husband and three children. She works as a high school English teacher and enjoys writing memoir and fiction in the spare time she can find. You can find her personal essays on Motherly.com and in Birthing Magazine.
|
Lucy’s first few weeks at home after being discharged were an exhaustive blur. The hospital bag holding all of Lucy’s keepsakes sat abandoned in the front room of our house. Resting in the same place I set it down upon its arrival. I looked at it each day but never touched it—always finding an excuse and a better time to tackle the job. My frustration bubbled over when my son found the bag and rifled through it. “That’s Lucy’s, don’t touch that, please,” I said sternly as my two year old smiled and held the tiny blood pressure cuff to his forehead. There was a strange sense of ownership I felt for the items in the bag. Even though they weren’t mine, Lucy and I shared them. I didn’t want to touch them but feared anyone else coming too close. Looking for a new location, I moved the bag onto the side table in our dining room. The bag and pink scrapbook rested there for the next few weeks where it would be safe from curious little hands.
As the holidays approached, I moved the still untouched scrapbook and bag again from the side table in an effort to reclaim my dining room. I made sure everything was safe inside before I pulled the drawstrings tight. The sides of the bag bulged and dimpled against the awkwardly shaped treasures it held. I tied the looped white string into a neat bow assuring that nothing would fall out. I even tied a double knot for good measure. I then carried the bag of precious memories upstairs and as gently and lovingly as I could, shoved the bag under my side of the bed.
In the sixteen months that have passed since leaving the hospital, the bag still sits in the same spot under my bed. I haven’t been able to bring myself to open it. The items that I obsessively hoarded and saved, the objects that carried so much meaning, reside under my bed-out of sight and out of mind. I know that the longer it takes me to get them out, the more I will forget about Lucy’s hospital stay. The less details for me to write in her scrapbook. The experience is indelible in my mind but the specifics are already starting to blur.
While these tangible items have been safely locked away, so has my grief. I fear what will come spilling out of the bag once opened again. Everything I worked so hard to pack up and put away when we left the NICU threatening to return. The neat bow I tied on the bag, the only thin line of defense keeping it all at bay.
I frequently think about throwing the bag away and pretending like it never happened. Over a year later and I’m content with letting it languish and collect dust under my bed. I’m afraid of what will be released by untying the tight, neat string that is keeping it all secure. Someday when I’m ready, I will open the bag and let its contents spill out; washing over me. I will look at each item and remember the pain and hurt they each carry.
I look at my daughter’s beautiful smile and am reminded why I’ve kept them safe in the first place. They are for her. These mementos are so Lucy can see all she accomplished when she was too tiny to even understand. How strong she was, how loved she was, and how proud we were and continue to be of her. I want to bury that hospital bag under my bed as deeply as I can so it never sees the light of day, not ready to relive those moments. But its presence brings me comfort knowing it is waiting and that someday I will be ready to face it.
As the holidays approached, I moved the still untouched scrapbook and bag again from the side table in an effort to reclaim my dining room. I made sure everything was safe inside before I pulled the drawstrings tight. The sides of the bag bulged and dimpled against the awkwardly shaped treasures it held. I tied the looped white string into a neat bow assuring that nothing would fall out. I even tied a double knot for good measure. I then carried the bag of precious memories upstairs and as gently and lovingly as I could, shoved the bag under my side of the bed.
In the sixteen months that have passed since leaving the hospital, the bag still sits in the same spot under my bed. I haven’t been able to bring myself to open it. The items that I obsessively hoarded and saved, the objects that carried so much meaning, reside under my bed-out of sight and out of mind. I know that the longer it takes me to get them out, the more I will forget about Lucy’s hospital stay. The less details for me to write in her scrapbook. The experience is indelible in my mind but the specifics are already starting to blur.
While these tangible items have been safely locked away, so has my grief. I fear what will come spilling out of the bag once opened again. Everything I worked so hard to pack up and put away when we left the NICU threatening to return. The neat bow I tied on the bag, the only thin line of defense keeping it all at bay.
I frequently think about throwing the bag away and pretending like it never happened. Over a year later and I’m content with letting it languish and collect dust under my bed. I’m afraid of what will be released by untying the tight, neat string that is keeping it all secure. Someday when I’m ready, I will open the bag and let its contents spill out; washing over me. I will look at each item and remember the pain and hurt they each carry.
I look at my daughter’s beautiful smile and am reminded why I’ve kept them safe in the first place. They are for her. These mementos are so Lucy can see all she accomplished when she was too tiny to even understand. How strong she was, how loved she was, and how proud we were and continue to be of her. I want to bury that hospital bag under my bed as deeply as I can so it never sees the light of day, not ready to relive those moments. But its presence brings me comfort knowing it is waiting and that someday I will be ready to face it.