I was dressed in a clown costume: brightly colored baby-doll dress, bloomers, big shoes, red nose—the works—preparing to run the annual Fourth of July 5k race in Skagway, Alaska. As I stretched at the starting line, playing up to the crowd, my husband strode up, grabbed my arm, and tried to pull me toward a side street. Distressed at his forcefulness, I yanked away, ready to demand he explain himself, when his face seemed to melt.
"Michael died."
His gray complexion and the way he reached for me slammed the reality home. Like in a movie scene, my body crumbled to the ground, and as if in a lucid dream, I hovered above: my body was slumped in the middle of the city's Third Street, smack in the center of the hoop-bottomed dress like a bullseye. The sound that escaped my lips still echoes down that empty street—and in my skull.
In the days and weeks to follow, people expressed their condolences. They placed gentle hands on my forearm and nodded wordlessly or, more often, uttered the phrase "I'm so sorry for your loss." Emails filled my inbox, and messages popped up on social media feeds with broken hearts and sad face emojis.
These sympathetic offerings were welcome, if painful, reminders that I was a mother who'd lost her child. But their kindness marked a clear delineation from the last time I'd grieved the loss of this same child: after I'd relinquished my parental rights 23 years earlier.