One afternoon, Kriti Mukherjee walked across the Common room and asked me, "Who wrote LOVE'S LABOUR LOST?"
"Shakespeare."
"No", she said. "Miss Carriage", followed by laughter.
Of course, I laughed too.
But I don't laugh at that word anymore. The word is synonymous to anything but laughter.
This morning, my colleague came back to work, ending over two weeks of emergency leave. We had been told she had slipped in the bathtub. When I asked her why she had been away, she said she had miscarried.
My reactions suddenly changed from general concern to consternation. I sat down on the visitor's chair in her cubicle and looked at her for a while, before I could say "sorry". She said, "it's alright", so as to comfort me. It should have been me saying that. But it wan't alright and we both knew. Miscarrying is not only about losing blood. It's about losing a part of you. It's about losing hope while losing someone, who might have been there to hold your tired hands in your days of despair. It's also about losing someone you would have showered with love.
In the next ten minutes, my colleague would talk of her depression, her attachment with the baby in the twenty days from her discovery to the loss and how she can't believe she lost it. I would tell her, mothers usually miscarry if the baby is already unhealthy. I would tell her she could make a baby again.
She's awfully depressed at the moment and I can't but think of the way I had felt after my loss.
Right now, I feel a void in my womb. A miscarriage is irreplaceable.
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