Secrets and… well, no lies, just secrets

I’ve been keeping some secrets, Internet. One good, three bad. Which do you want to hear first? Let’s do the bad first, get it over with.

About two weeks ago, I had a miscarriage. I know, you didn’t even know I was pregnant. I wanted to keep it a secret so that I wouldn’t have to tell the internet something happened if something should happen, and then something happened and I decided I wanted to tell the internet. Go figure.

That’s the first bit of bad news. The second bit is that I had the miscarriage while visiting my sick aunt who then passed away this past Friday. The final bit is that Andrew’s grandmother also died on Friday.

I can hear you all from here. “Oh my God, Dr. Maureen! This is awful!” And it is. It is awful. But it is not quite as awful as you think; first, my aunt was very frail and sick. The last time I saw her, she told my parents that she did not – absolutely did not – want to go to a nursing home. Had she not died, she likely would have had no other options. And Andrew’s grandmother was even frailer and sicker. She was 95 years old and has been dying by inches for the past three years. Both of them had been suffering for a while, and now they have rejoined their husbands and are at peace.

They are also both being waked and buried at the exact same time, about seventy miles apart. Obviously, Andrew and I cannot attend both, so Andrew took Jack to his grandmother’s wake tonight, and they are staying overnight at his parents’ house. I, meanwhile, went to my aunt’s wake and will meet Andrew’s family tomorrow for Gram’s funeral.

This leads us to the good secret. The good secret is that I currently own two pairs of jeans, one pair of “trouser” jeans, and one dress that fit, and the rest of my skirts and pants are too big. This is because, somehow, I lost a bunch of weight without actually, technically trying. It just sort of… came off. I think it must be because I walk a lot, but I can’t discount incredible luck. At any rate, before I was pregnant with Jack, I had built up a pretty respectable wardrobe, one of which I like to think Stacy and Clinton would approve. But then I got pregnant and outgrew everything – as one does – and then I was post-partum and still too big for everything. There followed a brief period where my old things fit and then, suddenly, everything was too big.

During each point of this sartorial* odyssey, I was working with a functional wardrobe of about two pairs of pants and a handful of shirts. I could get away with this because I only work two days a week, but when my weight finally stabilized, I was more than ready to stock up on some new stuff. Before Thanksgiving, I did start to replenish my wardrobe and bought a dress, a shirt and a pair of “trouser” jeans, but then I learned I was pregnant and stopped replenishing on the theory that I was about to grow back into my older clothes. But then I didn’t.

So what all this means for right now is that, as far as wake and funeral appropriate clothes go, I have one dress. And it is a dress I also wore to a dinner dance this past Saturday night, because I have no other dresses or skirts or non-denim pants to choose from. Sartorially speaking then, it’s convenient that I am going to my aunt’s wake but Gram’s funeral, because at least no one will know I am wearing the same dress to both.

You know what? I think my aunt would highly amused.

*I have been looking for an opportunity to use the word “sartorial” ever since I learned it while watching a terrible TV show, the name of which it would be far too embarrassing to reveal.**

**Charmed.