Fatherhood Forever

I came home from 5 months at sea. After 12 days home, she told me she was pregnant. I asked “Is that why you were laying inclined yesterday, to try for another pregnancy?” Uncomfortably, she said “No, I took some medicine to abort the baby.” I was aghast!! You did what?! “I will stop taking it if you want”, she said. I didn’t know what to say. I would have welcomed another gift. All I could think of was those poor deformed Thalidomide babies. I said “no, you must follow through with it because the baby will be damaged already from the poison.” I wanted nothing to do with it, and I didn’t want to think of it. Well, the medicine didn’t work, and after she got stronger medicine, she finally miscarried. I rushed her to the hospital. It was a terrible, bloody mess. I had to get adult diapers for her. While in the recovery room, the doctor came in with a small, pink baby about an inch long in a plastic baggy suspended in water. She asked me if I wanted to see it and I looked at the baby. I was very sad and I was tearing up. I wanted to take the baby and bury it with a cross on some land I have by the river, but did not say so. She asked my girlfriend if she wanted to keep it, and she said no. I left it at that and the doctor left.

I feel like a reluctant participant in this sad event. Because of the timing, I don’t believe this was my child. Had she not already been taking abortion pills? I would never have approved of aborting, but would have welcomed the child into our family.

I became very depressed, subject to bouts of crying, especially when talking about what happened. I feel like a heal. I dream about it, and I think of the baby in the corner of that clear plastic bag, and that it never even got the respect of a Christian burial. I’m crying as I write this. Even after 2 years, it was a loss, not of an old man, but of an innocent. What kind of man doesn’t protect the innocent?

I believe this was the final thing that broke up our family. I want to go to confession to confess this and ask God’s forgiveness, but I don’t know if I will ever really come to terms with it.

We have two other lovely kids, and I visit them often. But I have become a drifter.