Expiatory Writing Example: Failed IVF

Below is an example of expiatory writing which is the subject of my Recipe "Expiation Through Writing". The context for this particular writing is the failure of the first IVF procedure my wife and I underwent in February 2004. My wife and I had been tryng to get pregnant (her, not me) since 2000. All efforts had failed. Our hopes were raised for this IVF procedure. When it failed too, we were both devastated. This writing below, which I emailed to friends at the time, was my (successful) effort in expunging that feeling from my gut. It worked.

As a postscript, the second IVF also failed (but that failure didn't floor us like the first time). Then the third one succeeded (we even have some buns in the freezer). Our life now centers around our angelic 18-month-old. I fear, as I write toward the end of this piece, that, concerning our offspring, my feelings have moved well past detached love and into head-over-heels attachment. I suppose that feeling is just part of the human condition -- one that promises much misery, but one that is certainly bittersweet just the same.

Anyway, as an example of what my Recipe was about, here is the piece:

So the phone rang last night at 9:30.  The office had called us earlier yesterday morning, scheduling a time for today.  We took that to mean it was a go.  Later in the day, when we called in, we found that wasn’t the case.  The results weren’t in yet.  So we had to scale back our expectations.  They told us that he would be calling us at 7 p.m. to give us the news.  But when 7 came and went, and continued past 9 without the phone ringing, we figured it was a go.  And just as we were figuring that, the phone rang. 

It was him. In the cheerful voice of someone announcing that you had won the sweepstakes, he said the word “none”.  For a moment, she and I looked at each other, confused.  I was happy with that moment of confusion because it means my right frontal brain is in fine working order.  That’s the part that understands the non-verbal aspects of communication.  And during this cheerful call, my right brain heard “go”, loud and clear.  But it was his words, the verbal part of communication – the part the left side was listening for – that said “no go”.  And since we live in a left-dominated culture, verbal no go trumped non-verbal go.

After the momentary confusion lifted, I swear I could have heard the sound of a door closing.  And I suddenly found myself back in an arena, the final horn sounding.  I was back on a swing, chatting softly with a woman.  I was back, standing by a freshly dug grave, tossing in dirt.

I have read that when we are in certain moods, our brain serves up memories that match that mood.  I know this is the truth.  Because the mood I found myself in last night is unmistakable.  When I awoke at 4 a.m. this morning, the elephant was still sitting on my chest, my throat was still constricted, and I still had that strange sensation of floating under water.

But I didn’t weep.  I have difficulty weeping.  She, on the other hand, weeps easily. But then again, she is my opposite.  She knows how she feels, but can never be quite sure about what she wants.  I, on the other hand, am certain about what I want, but my feelings are mysteries to me.  Writing is the only way I know to throw the elephant off, and breathe free again.

So when he called last night, I suddenly realized that hope had become faith; faith, expectation; and expectation, desperate attachment.  Hope, faith, expectation, and attachment form a scale that lies in the gray zone between wants and feelings.  So this scale is often opaque to all of us – both the feeling-challenged, and the want-challenged.

What it takes to see this scale clearly is to have the object of that hope, that faith, that expectation, or that attachment, jerked away from us.  Once that happens, it is easy to tell how high our mercury of desperation has risen.  When you awake to find the elephant sitting on your chest, you know that the mercury is near the limit.

So as he was talking to us on the phone, the thought crossed my mind that he must have the most curious of jobs.  Some of his patients experience blissful euphoria; the rest taste abject dejection.  There is no apathetic middle.  This is the case because all of his patients are desperate.  We know this to be true because the costs of his services are comically unreachable by all but those of us with, as my dad used to say, “more money than brains”.  Yes, this man must never have a dull week.  Or perhaps all this weekly desperation does, after awhile, seem rather dull to him.

Anyway, as all of this was happening, I was reminded that the lucky among us are those of us whose desperate desires are granted. Hey, getting what you want tastes pretty sweet.  And given that our brains feed on glucose, we are all, at bottom, sugar-aholics.

But the luckiest among us are those of us whose desperate desires are dashed.  Where the thing to which we are pathetically attached is snatched away.  With no consolation prize.  No amelioration of the pain. Nor any mitigation of the damage.  The luckiest among us find ourselves standing in a field as the sky opens up.  We know there is no shelter, and we have no choice but to accept the cold and bitter rain. 

So I was feeling lucky last night.  For this is no ordinary rain.  It is the rain that washes away those fears and attachments that have clung to you since you were a child.  Over the years, these fears and attachments where whipped up by the wind, and swirling in the air, they stuck to you like flypaper.  Over the years, you forgot they were there.  You forgot, that is, until this blessed rain comes again, and washes more of them off you.  And leaves you feeling nothing but profound gratitude for your use of the decaying carcass that you are presently renting.

And if you are really lucky, you will find yourself naked in this field, being pelted by this rain, with no shelter in sight.  You will be lucky because any moment now, the clouds will part, and the light will shine through.  It is the infinite light in which love and wisdom merge and become one. It is where beginning meets end, and the notion of causation is revealed as mere illusion.  It is the light that reminds you that everything is exactly as it should be, and as it has always been, and ever will be.  Now and forever, for the ages of ages.

So as he was talking to us on the phone last night, I started feeling really lucky.  Not that dime-a-dozen kind of luck we feel when we get what we want.  But rather the greatest  luck of all when we get the very opposite.  For it is written, “The last shall be first, and the first last.”  I had no idea what those words meant when I was a boy.  I still don’t know today.  But I do have an idea.

Anyway, I was still feeling profoundly lucky – feeling that delicious sense of anticipation you feel when you are standing outside the door of a special place – when we drove this morning up to the Isle of the Misfit Gametes.  After a couple of hours to ponder our rare fortune, we went into his office to go over the results.

Six boys.  Six boys, some greedy, some shy.  Some grabbing too may Xs, or too many 15s or 21s, and one spunky fellow grabbing more of everything he could get his grubby little cells on.  But then there was one little guy too shy to even to pick up just one 17.

He told us that none would make it in this world.  That the best we could expect in this world was that one or two might make it all the way out of the chute, but end up cold and blue.  I was thinking he just wasn’t using his imagination.  I mean, there must be lots of worlds out there yet undiscovered.  Who’s to say everyone on those planets needs perfect complements of Xs and Ys and 15s and 17s and 21s?

Anyway, if you catch yourself thinking this way, then you know you’re bait for that seductive call.  And sure enough, we learned that this wasn’t the final game.  This wasn’t the even first game of the tournament.  We’re not now in the consolation bracket.  Hell, the regular season hasn’t even started yet.  And the only thing needed to keep the season going is money.

Now, we’ve got the money.  But that got me thinking about the people who don’t have money.  How lucky they must be to lose, and have their losses be final.  Losses recorded in the books, and branded on their foreheads.  Those lucky people must be shedding their skins of fear and attachment regularly.

But then I remembered that most of the people without money think mostly about the people with the money and figure that the moneyed people can just buy whatever they want.  Then I realized that the luckiest among us are those of us with the money.  Not because of the stuff we can buy with the money.  But rather because we learn about the stuff that all the money in the world just can’t buy.  And maybe we remember that the place we came from, which is the place we’re going to, doesn’t take VISA, doesn’t accept checks, and doesn’t even recognize the green stuff.

Well, we might remember all that, except for all these fancy new gadgets in our culture.  Ventilator machines and heart defibrillators. Pills to calm us down, other pills to make us happy, and still other pills to give us a rise.  This technology just won’t let us lose.  “Near death” experiences are becoming as common as popcorn.

Does this technology liberate us or enslave us?  Neither.  I believe it keeps us in purgatory.  Joan Osborne sang “People don’t live or die, people just float”.

It is now the afternoon after the night of the phone call, and I find myself floating somewhere between what I want most, and the prospect of not getting that.  Technology assures me there will always be another game day.  And another one after that.

But maybe I can find a way to step off this float, and throw our money at the technology a little more lightly the next time.  Maybe next time, hope will bump into faith, but stop short at the gates of expectation, and well short of the seductive, false shelter of attachment.

Maybe.  Maybe not.  Maybe tomorrow, the comforting illusion will return.  The one that conveniently ignores the cold fact that none of any this will matter to anyone 100 years from now.  Maybe I’ll “safely” return to this blissful ignorance tomorrow.

But for now, I think I’ll just get myself a beer or two and wait for nightfall.  Maybe tonight, sleep will come again softly.