Born Again – One Mother’s Graduation from the School of the Dead

Just days before my first semester of college, I was rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery. Misdiagnosed twice, an entopic pregnancy had gone unchecked and I was eight hours from hemorrhaging to death.

Originally diagnosed as a miscarriage, I was overwhelmed by the idea of being pregnant and losing a baby all at the same time. I was given a pamphlet on mothers in mourning, and sent home with my husband. Being newly married, I don’t think he ever fully grasped the psychological impact of that event.

On the second trip to the hospital, the pain was diagnosed as “cramping” and I was pumped full of pain killers. When they began to wear off, the severity of my condition became apparent. Curled up in the fetal position, screaming from the pain, I faced my mortality for the first time.

They say your life flashes before your eyes, but it was not the past that ran through my mind. It was the future. As they prepped me for surgery, I worried about my young, insecure husband, and how he would face such a devastating loss. Then I was swallowed by the deep black of unconsciousness.

The next twenty-four hours can only be recalled in the foggy haze of semi-consciousness. I remember the intense cold of the anesthesia wearing off. I remember stumbling out of bed to the restroom, pulling an IV behind me, but most of that time is shadowed in sleep.

It is the next day that is still vivid to me. Riding in the car, the sun was bright, the birds were singing and cars were rushing to and from their destinations. The brilliant day hit me with its ferocious appetite for life. It was a day that did not acknowledge whether I had lived or died. It would have been the same day with or without me: the same sun, the same bird songs, the same oblivious rush of people who had never known me.

It was a moment that changed my life. Hélèn Cixous calls this the School of the Dead, when we “pass through the cemetery, our hearts beating from so much death, until we reach young life.” It was not the first time I had or would encounter death. With vivid recollection, I remember my sister being still born on Christmas day when I was only five. On the day after his twenty-fourth birthday (coming full circle as life often does) the husband I had worried about on my death bed would lose his life in a fatal motorcycle accident.

Although facing death is always devastating, experiencing death is transforming. It was the one time I closed my eyes knowing I may never open them again. Waking from that primordial fog on such a vibrant day triggered a new found sense of awe and a profound appreciation of time.

Over a decade later, I’m remarried with a beautiful little girl. My gratitude is made more intense because of the losses littering my past. Given the chance, I would change nothing. As Cixous says, “This is grace: given death, then taken back . . . We lose and in losing we win.”