After Watching Our Twins Die, Our Marriage Almost Didn't Make It. Here's How We Found Our Way Back.
Most days, I wake as the last of the stars fade into the sky. I make my way into the kitchen to make coffee, nearly tripping over the mewling cat twisting between my ankles. As I scratch my armpit, my thumb catches in a hole in my T-shirt. Then, I try to run my fingers through my hair, but yesterday’s gel pulls at my scalp.
Finally, my coffee is ready. Shuffling toward the living room, I squint into the light and set the French press next to my overstuffed chair. Ahhhh — an hour of pencil-to-paper journaling before I must think about waiting deadlines. Mid thought, I look up and smile at the dog curled up on her pillow. She thumps her tail.
In the room next to where I sit, my husband, Lyle, still slumbers in his equally hole-y T-shirt and flannel pajama bottoms. Renegade snores escape his CPAP-Darth-Vader mask. Lucky for me, the tick tock of the mantel clock — passed down through the generations — blocks most of the noise.
On the weekend, without an alarm, I’m lucky to get a half hour of this quiet writing time before Lyle clomps by on his way to the bathroom. He hawks up a mambo loogie — making my gag reflex kick in. I try not to growl at the fart bomb also headed my way.
He walks back out, thrusts his hips in the direction of my cozy writing corner.
“Wanna boink?”
I’d like to say I would never scrunch up my face and reply, “The vapor following you could strangle the dog, you know.” But in all the years we’ve been married, I admit I’ve said much worse. Believe me, my prize factor has also diminished in our 20-plus years of marriage. I’ve lost and gained enough weight over the years to anger my skin; without adequate sleep, I turn into something unrecognizable, even to myself; and my own flatulence could make a room of 8-year-old boys belly laugh for days.
If I’ve managed to gulp at least one cup of coffee as Lyle waits — by now swirling his hips — I might grin and say, “You sure know how to get me in the mood.”
I smile as he turns around and picks up the clutter on the kitchen counter. He opens a drawer, grabs a rag, and wipes crumbs into the sink. “Hey, look over here — I’m even gonna clean off the stove.”
I laugh and look up from my notebook.
“Oooh, baby, baby,” I say. “Show me a little more love. Gimme an hour. I gotta finish this thought.”
He completes the lick-and-a-promise tidying as I reach for noise-canceling headphones. Soon, we’ll grab a quickie, offer thank you’s, and get on with our days — standard practice a few times a week. It’s not nearly frequent enough for him, but I’m quick to remind him (even if he doesn’t believe me) that we’re having more sex than any of our friends and many couples a hell of a lot younger than us.
A few days later, you’ll find us snuggled up on the couch streaming one of the few shows we both like enough to watch together. He offers a foot massage, and who am I not to accept.
“You know, we used to do it every day — sometimes more,” he says as he rubs salve into my dry heels — crusty feet that even I don’t want to touch.
I lean up and nuzzle into his neck. “Sorry about your luck, dude,” I say. “It’s what I got.”
What we also had recently was a big anniversary — 30 years. I’m not sure how it can seem like yesterday and an eternity at the same time.
Newly married, I had imagined clichéd sunset walks and long, romantic conversations. Sure, I suppose there was that trip to Lake Eerie watching the waves crash around the lighthouse as gulls soared high in the sky, but there was also the fight where I cartoonishly whacked him in the arm with a frying pan following a disagreement about the proper towel to use when washing a car.
My mom and dad certainly couldn’t offer advice since they’d been through their own dysfunction involving marriage, divorce, marriage, and divorce (all to each other) before they finally called it quits. Instead, I turned to the only one in my family who was still married — my Gram. I wanted to know her tricks or maybe some pointers to build a successful marriage, but she’d say things like, “Sometimes it feels like a lot of work, but it’s till death do you part.”
Her so-called advice sounded more like a life sentence, but I convinced myself Gram wasn’t doing it right, either. After all, she and my grandpa seemed to enjoy their time apart more than time together. I was convinced my marriage would be different. Yet, on mornings when my headphones won’t cancel out Lyle’s bodily noises, I admit I’ve fashioned a girl palace in my mind — quiet, tidy and aroma free.
Perhaps in our early 20s, we resolved our disagreements between satin sheets and endless cans of Reddi-Wip. Soon enough though, a mortgage and sleepless nights with a new infant became our daily routine. Yet, I still believed we had it all figured out until a few years later when life smacked us across the face with a surprise pregnancy — twins no less. During those early months of pregnancy, I believed the biggest challenge would be diapers, sleeping schedules and managing a new-to-us van to tote around three kids.
But a little more than halfway through the pregnancy, I went into preterm labor, and one of the baby’s sacs ruptured. As I lay in bed in a sterile hospital with Lyle at my side, we confronted realities no couple should ever face: life-threatening infections for me, one dying baby, and one baby we likely couldn’t save.
Less than 24 hours later, we found ourselves cuddling two babies, swaddled in one flannel blanket trimmed in blue and pink, their tiny fingers barely big enough to curl around my pinky. As I tried not to count those fingers or watch them struggle to breathe, Lyle and I said goodbye to Nolan and Simone, the children we would never know.
In those early weeks of condolences and casseroles, we clung to each other, squeezing each other’s hands until our knuckles drained of color. But weeks churned to months, and Lyle threw himself into work — the one thing that remained normal for him — and I scoured grief books, convinced I should be able to find just the right path for something I no longer had words for. In all the pages I dog-eared, I was dumbfounded by divorce statistics of couples who lost children. Surely, we would survive.
Yet, every time I mentioned Nolan and Simone’s names, Lyle would look away or busy himself with things like removing the sticky bits left on the kitchen table I hadn’t had the energy to remove. Soon enough, I began to understand how couples drifted, and I showed up at weekly therapy appointments — alone. “He won’t come here, and he won’t talk about the twins, and when I do, he looks away or gets really, really busy,” I said one day.
“Couples grieve very differently. Did it occur to you he can’t talk about them right now?” the therapist asked. “You need to talk about Nolan and Simone because you talk and process at the same time, but Lyle needs to process first, then talk. It doesn’t mean he’s not hurting. You must respect these differences.”
I’m sure I rolled my eyes and thought she was giving me a line of total bullshit.
However, a month or so later, Lyle and I were outside on the back porch soaking up the unexpected March sun. His legs stretched over the edge of the deck railing. I sat catty-corner, eyes closed, face pointed toward the evening rays peeking around the house. He mumbled something I didn’t hear. I forced my eyes open, and scrunched up the sleeves of my sweater. I rested my elbow on the patio table, the cool metal edge giving rise to goose bumps along my arm.
I didn’t ask about his workday. Had he been asked “how many kids do you have?” by th? Did Lyle say “one” and feel the lie stab him in the gut?
He didn’t ask how long I stood in the shower that morning, bracing myself against the steamy walls, scalding currents streaming down my face, screaming in the one place our living child couldn’t hear me.
Silence thickened. Easy conversation had also been lost in that hospital birthing suite.
“The sun feels good. Maybe spring will come early,” I said.
“We should get rid of the van,” Lyle said.
“Where’d that come from?” I asked.
“It’s bad on the ice, and it’s too big,” he said. “We don’t need it now.”
I tilted my cheek to my shoulder to catch a salty tear.
“I like it. It gives me room to haul stuff around,” I said, leaving out that the van was my one physical reminder of Nolan and Simone.
“Goddammit, Melissa. Every time I look at that thing, I think of all we lost.”
This memory still leaks down my face on occasion. I would never wish such unbearable heartbreak on another person. However, I’m incredibly grateful Lyle finally shared his thoughts on that evening. Our van reminded him of all that would never be, which was too much for him every single day. To me, the van somehow connected me to Nolan and Simone, and provided one more way to show their existence to the outside world, like saying their names aloud.
In this one brief interaction, Lyle let me know the twins were just as important to him as they were to me. Each of our reactions also showed how shared pain and grief can still be so different and isolating.
I’d like to say this moment of winter respite brought a kinder, gentler acceptance of our different perspectives, but I was only just beginning to see grief can’t be packaged in such neat and tidy ways. Instead, I had to trust — or hope — that we would weather the grief, together and separate, while we looked for peace. At times this looked like coexistence — strangers or polite acquaintances. We would wake up and say, “Morning. See you later.”
At night we would sit at the dinner table and wait until one of us said, “I’ll start the dishwasher if you wipe off the table.”
I’m sure some people think that’s horrible, but if I was a betting woman, I would say those are the same people who haven’t yet had the universe or God or man wallop them so hard they fall to the ground wishing they’d die.
Still, I regret too many nights after Lyle and I turned off the bedside light, I flipped to my right side, my back creating a barrier, instead of turning over to spoon up to the warmth of his back, burrowing my nose into his neck to smell the lingering fragrance of Irish Spring soap.
But some evenings, Lyle came in the door, and we stood in our entryway, countless shoes strewn around the rug under our feet. If we were lucky, the smell of a pot roast might be rolling off the nearby stove, but the evening sun had long disappeared through the glass-panel front door. We stood, holding on — clinging really.
So many years have passed since our devastating loss, which sometimes feels like it happened to another family. I’m thankful we ended up in the other column of the divorce statistics — it could have ended differently. Most evenings now, we still meet up on the back porch over a craft beer, but not before he lets a big one rip on his way outside. Depending on the day, I’ll shake my head or offer a little giggle.
Life is quieter and less intense as it once was, and maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be. It’s comforting to know no one knows me better than Lyle — even though we still share plenty of differences. Sure, I still sometimes wish he’d suggest a dreamy adventure or notice the particular way I set my mug down and offer a hug right away. At the same time, I’m also less likely to feel the need to fill in silence with too many words. After all, we can’t possibly know the other’s every thought or need. Well, that’s not entirely true. I’m pretty sure he’s thinking about getting lucky, and I know we already are.
Originally from the Midwest, Melissa Fast is a nonfiction writer who moved to the American Southwest during the pandemic and never left. Her work can be found in HuffPost, Burningword Literary Journal, Minerva’s Rising, and other publications. She’s working on a memoir, excerpts of which have received accolades from the South Carolina Writers Association and have been published in a grief anthology.
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