Flavors of Grief
by Brandy E. Wyant
It wasn’t the first argument. Every conversation seemed to turn into an argument, after I told my mother that I planned to use donor sperm to try to have a child before my fertility ran out. She felt she owed me warning of all the inherent challenges of single parenthood, as if these fears didn’t already taunt me every moment I spent with an idle mind. I never hesitated to snap back all the ways she could never understand my situation, having already been a parent when she entered her 30s.
This particular debate, the most venomous so far, fell on my 35th birthday. E, her partner of over a decade, had witnessed more than a few of our snippy exchanges. Wise enough to stay out of it, though with nowhere to hide in my tiny one-bedroom apartment, he busied himself with sorting through our farmer’s market purchases or swiping through photos on his phone of the more convivial moments of the visit – us posing beside the sign for a historical landmark or holding up ice cream cones.
Yet he followed when I stormed out, my mother screaming after him not to get in the car with me because she thought I was too upset to drive. He followed anyway. Somehow, we ended up driving around town looking for persimmons.
E was always searching for some maddeningly specific grocery item. On separate occasions, I’d faced TSA questioning over five pounds of fresh fava beans and a dozen sfogliatelle on my holiday travels – gifts for him. Apparently one can’t find a decent sfogliatella in Pittsburgh, despite its significant Italian population. His joy at opening the box of partially smashed pastries was worth the cost of parking in Boston’s North End and the box’s twine cutting off the circulation to my fingers throughout the journey.
I discovered my allergy to persimmon in adulthood, when my lips and gums swelled after drinking a fruit smoothie, persimmon the only ingredient I had never had before. My unfamiliarity with even the appearance of the persimmon made me a useless shopping companion, and yet we succeeded. I cracked my first smile since the argument as I watched E pile persimmons, the Italian subtype of course, into a basket while a bemused store employee looked on.
When we returned to my apartment, with more persimmons than could reasonably fit in a carry-on bag, all any of us could do was laugh. My mother, cooled off a bit, playfully chided E, “How could you force her to drive you around…on her birthday…looking for a persimmon she’s allergic to?”
The ludicrous is healing.
He never gave his opinion on my plan to have a baby. He never even mentioned it. Our focus was all on the persimmons. I’ll never be able to thank him for that.
A year later, by my 36th birthday, he was dead.
*
“Have you considered pregnancy?” my friend asked, after I shared that I had always imagined myself as an adoptive parent, though now questioned that path after learning more about the adoption industry and reading adoptees’ stories.
I really hadn’t considered carrying a biological child, somewhat remarkable for a cisgender woman who always assumed she would be a mother. Days after my conversation with my friend, I began to imagine how I would adapt to the symptoms of pregnancy. I read every evidence-based book on childbirth I could find, and some less evidence-based. My mood lifted with the gift of choice.
Age 34 and conscious of how many eggs might be left, I scheduled a new patient appointment with a local OB-GYN office. Sitting in the waiting room, I grinned down at my clipboard of paperwork when I heard the receptionist congratulate a postpartum patient on the phone. Just for being granted the appointment, I felt like I’d joined the mom club and never questioned whether I belonged.
And I thought of E. I thought how lucky this maybe baby was to have him as a grandfather. When he was alive, we never referred to him as my stepfather, because he and my mother weren’t legally married. After he was gone, I counted all the ways he’d more than earned the title.
No one in that office, either administrative or clinical, questioned my fitness to be a single mother by choice. In a refreshing contrast to my everyday acquaintances, no one hinted at how hard parenthood would be or subtly inquired about my financial situation. They all assumed that I’d already made the best decision for me, for which I was grateful. The only confusion came not from the lack of a wedding band on my hand but when the medical assistant asked me how to spell “persimmon” as she typed it into my allergy list. A persimmon allergy was so unusual, she would remember me for it when I returned the following year, and then the next, proclaiming that this time, I was finally ready.
*
“You’ll find a nice Italian boy,” E used to tell me, with an air of certainty. We don’t have to worry or plan or work too hard. It will just come.
For him, it was all work, though it never seemed hard, and I never once heard him say he was tired. For most of his adult life, he balanced a full-time job on the night shift with daytime work in the family pizza shop, all while caring for family members with physical disabilities and maintaining an elaborate garden.
He was the eldest, by nearly a decade, on the day we took on an amusement park far too big for our ages, and the rest of us were incapable of sitting upright in a restaurant by the end of the day. Back at the hotel, he magicked a hot meal from canned pasta and the contents of the cooler he’d packed, as we sat struggling through that jet lag pseudo-nausea feeling of complete exhaustion.
He always said yes. To wading in the ocean in Maine, northern Atlantic temperatures be damned. To one more board game at 3 am on New Year’s. To climbing into the backyard apple tree and shaking it, while I ran around trying to catch the apples for our improvised apple crisp before they bruised on the ground. To attending my Unitarian Universalist church on a visit, despite having sent his kids to Catholic school and his horror when we ate fajitas on Good Friday. To a game of bocce, never mind the grass stains that could befall his khaki pants. To paying God knows how much extra postage to have Halloween candy delivered to me overnight, “extremely urgent” stamped on the card. To gelato. To laughter. To seeing anything new.
The promised Italian boy never came, not that I’d bothered to look for him. I liked to make my own decisions, so a solo household worked well. Then I decided to get a second master’s degree and change careers at the turn of my fourth decade, foregoing financial security to salvage my mental health from burnout. For years, I chased after the next milestone. Finding a partner couldn’t be a priority when I had to save myself first. The mid-thirties sneak up fast.
At half E’s age, I lacked his stamina. I couldn’t push myself like he did and still manage to be “goofy,” as his best friend marveled in his eulogy. Increasingly as I aged, my own goofiness only came out around him. Everything in my life was an obligation, whether external or self-imposed. E brought joy to the work, an attitude that I’m sure makes parenting more manageable, for those who can access it.
Could I access the joy? Some days, yes. My laughter came quick in conversation, and I appreciated simple pleasures – the resonance of a particular note from my violin in a church sanctuary, a handful of perfectly ripe blackberries straight from the container, the awkward strut of a turkey crossing a parking lot. Other days, perhaps the majority, I emanated stress and frustration even with my calendar and to-do list barely full.
There were so many reasons to say no. My child would have no aunts, uncles, or first cousins, and only one grandparent who lived 500 miles away. Our finances would be sufficient, but not comfortable enough for regular vacations or a spacious home. They may inherit my genetic predisposition to substance abuse, or my positional vertigo, or the need for jaw surgery to open their airway upon reaching adulthood. I couldn’t predict their feelings on only knowing one of their biological parents, or how much suffering this would bring them. Family and strangers alike would criticize my choice, and the stigma would trickle down to the child. Most sobering for me, they would only ever have one parent’s opinion, and if we disagreed, no one else would be present to validate them, to take them out in search of persimmons and artfully avoid taking a side, somehow supporting everyone in the end.
Yet I found myself unable to say no. At home in the evenings, I pictured a toddler on my hip or playing nearby on the floor. I imagined catching up on the day at the childcare center as a welcome distraction from my own rumination and anxiety and the monotony of daily life. I looked forward to rediscovering children’s literature through the bedtime story ritual, knowing that I needed to be forced to slow life down, and acutely aware that I’d never do it for my own sake.
*
On the 36th day after we lost E, I said yes, to a donor with Italian heritage. In his childhood photo, I could see the features of E’s son. I had the vials of sperm shipped to my OB-GYN’s office, forfeiting the opportunity to sell them back to the bank if I changed my mind. I was sure I wouldn’t, compelled to transmit some of his love to my child before it burned out.
I didn’t want to wait for the month I’d so thoughtfully chosen for the first insemination trial. My arms ached for the baby. Yet there were logistical hurdles that needed time to work out, and so I looked for distractions.
On a whim, the 149th day without E, I drove to New York City to attend a book launch event. The authors were sisters-in-law, and the first few rows of the auditorium contained their extended family. Sitting among the family gave me the alienating experience of being the only person you know at a wedding, as family members roamed the room before the event began, introducing friends to nephews and daughters and siblings.
After the talk, one of the authors swept up a preschool-aged relative, the event’s youngest attendee, in her arms and danced with her, oblivious to us in the book signing line. My smile at them was genuine, though a small part of me whispered, Your kid won’t have this. You’ll have to build them an extended family from scraps of close connections spread over the country. And you’ll never have a book signing of your own. You don’t even have the time to write now. How are you going to do it as a solo parent? And finally, most hauntingly to someone who prized their independence so fiercely she wouldn’t even date, If you’re about to get pregnant this spring, this is the last time you will ever drive to New York without telling anyone where you’re going.
I drove home not caring to know whether I would ovulate that month, supposed to be the first cycle that I tracked with the test kits. Two months later, I stopped taking the prenatal vitamins. The excitement at envisioning myself sharing the world with a small person I loved more than words was replaced with a constant internal monologue. Imagine how this task will multiply in complexity once you have an infant.
I’d become irritated at the cat to whom E was “Pap-Pap,” at his request, just because she jumped on my desk seeking the attention I never found time to give her. The internal voice taunted, You don’t have the patience to be a parent.
Just a couple months earlier, I’d feel pangs of longing when I encountered families in the community. Overnight, the envy gave way to relief when I saw a parent struggle to contain a toddler’s boundless energy. At my church, I saw a mother moved to tears at her daughter’s solo with the youth choir, and I imagined my own child searching the congregation for my gaze while swaying to the beat. Buoyed by the lift of the music, I convinced myself that the sacrifices of single parenthood were well worth the rewards. Later that same day, having returned home to a list of unfinished tasks, I’d envision the contributions I could make professionally without children. The hour after that, I’d reach a compromise – yes to parenthood, but only if I could finagle a partner. And maybe I could! My mind would fly through past connections who I might approach with dating in mind. Finally by evening, the hopelessness set in. I couldn’t get back the past ten years of fertility, and it might take just that long to find a partner I trusted as a coparent.
A few days later, I’d be in the performer role myself at rehearsal with my community orchestra. Playing in this exclusively adult ensemble – counting beats, getting notes right, getting them wrong, hearing the swell of the rest of the section coming in around me – felt like the very definition of being alive. When I took a summer screenwriting class, my classmates read a scene from my screenplay in a live workshop. Hearing the dialogue I’d crafted come to life, knowing for the first time the privilege of having one’s work performed, was joy itself. I’d heard that parenting brought these moments of complete presence, and perhaps to a greater extent than my creative pursuits were capable. But to give up writing and playing violin to an uncertain hope for something bigger? What a gamble.
In the months after we lost E, more of them than I care to admit to, I only felt okay at work. I had to work. Days off were torturous. A nurtured career has a way of filling in the gaps of time in one’s life, until there is no more room. After the long road to build my professional identity, I couldn’t imagine allowing it to take a backseat to motherhood.
And yet, I couldn’t say no. I even tried on the words, speaking to others in past tense about the decision of whether to have children, as if it was already made. I drove myself to depression and back reading comment threads on social media on posts that included a reference to “childfree.” I tried on the label in my own mind. It didn’t fit.
Over the better part of a year, I had scribbled notes on over 200 sperm donors and created a crude tracking system of “maybe”; “I’d need a genetic test, then maybe”; “only as a last resort”; and “definitely no.” The man I’d chosen had given one of the few audio interviews that I’d been able to tolerate, much less feel excited about. I wanted half of my child’s DNA to come from someone I’d at least go to dinner with. Finally, I’d chosen, and despite my doubts about solo parenthood by choice, the choice of donor never soured. I could picture the child’s face, a combination of our features. The picture only deepened my indecision. It felt like being torn in half.
I told everyone that I was having a midlife crisis. My friends laughed. My therapist proclaimed, “You’re so young!” and had the communication savvy to sound warm rather than patronizing. My bereaved mother stared blankly at me through the video call, with a look of bottomless overwhelm.
They didn’t understand.
I was 36 and one-half years old. E died one month shy of 73 years. I was exactly at the midpoint of his life.
*
On days when my rational mind has its say, I remind myself that at my age, conception is unlikely. I could use the three vials of sperm sitting in a freezer somewhere at my OB-GYN’s office, and then go no further down the path of infertility intervention when the three tries don’t work. Finally unburdened, because the choice wasn’t mine after all, I could tell everyone that I have fertility issues. My grief would drift from the realm of disenfranchised to the socially endorsed. Those who should have been a mother, if not for their own body’s betrayal, are a category distinct from those who chose not to become a mother or who didn’t have the other slices of life stability arranged in time.
So why not use the three frozen vials?
Because it might work. And E isn’t here. If he was, he would volunteer to demonstrate a streamline push-off from the wall of the pool’s shallow end first before my preschooler tried it. I’d taught him the skill in his sixties, because he didn’t have the fortune of swim lessons as a child. Look, Pap-Pap can do it, now you do it. If they inherited my facial structure and needed jaw surgery in their late teens, he would have prepared the same soups that nourished me when I sipped them through the wires. He would cut up a persimmon and place it on the highchair’s tray.
*
I woke an hour or so before the alarm, as happened too often, on Father’s Day, the 225th day he’d been gone. My mind grasped at the usual flurry of anxious threads, some dream, some dread.
There’s no way you can be a parent.
You’re too muddled to get out of bed, and your baby would have woken hours ago.
But I’m supposed to be a parent.
It’s all too much.
But this is your last chance. You’ll be too old.
You know that women can’t have it all.
Were you so foolish to believe you could be the exception?
I don’t even want the career I went tens of thousands of dollars into debt for. I can’t do it.
This isn’t the life I was supposed to have.
The same flurry of thoughts came nearly every morning. An hour or so later, with brain fully turned on and caffeinated, I could summon the memories of E rising to the call of every unmet need – a hairdresser for his inner circle during the pandemic, a caterer for family gatherings, and a perennial emotional buffer.
I owe it to him to keep going, whether as a parent or not. Whether I decide, or whether time decides for me, his love existed just the same.
*
On the 234th day, I took a prophylactic antihistamine and raised a slice of persimmon to my lips for the first time, curious to understand E’s enthusiasm for them. Summer is not persimmon season the U.S., and therefore the local grocery store only had imported Fuyu persimmons. He wouldn’t have been nearly as excited for this persimmon, but I’d like to think he appreciated the gesture made in his honor anyway.
Savor it, I told myself, this might be the only taste you’ll ever get.
Of course he was right. There was nothing else like it. The skin of a tomato, the scent of a pumpkin, the texture of a peach, and the flavor all its own.
BIO
Brandy E. Wyant is a clinical social worker and writer based in Massachusetts. Her personal essays have appeared in HuffPost Personal, Solstice, Change Seven, Pollen Magazine, and Atlantic Northeast. Find her on Instagram: @bewyant
