Why a book about miscarriage? In spite of the other topics explored, miscarriage is the primary theme of this collection. To me, miscarriage sums up life in this present age. Hope followed by loss, loss that cannot be explained or recompensed. I find it amazing that any pregnancy ends in birth, and that any birth is followed by another pregnancy.

Miscarriage is a rarely explored topic. This is even more true when you examine men’s conversations. As alone as a woman feels when she has lost her constant inner companion, the man was alone to begin with, and now has no categories or conversationalists to help him define his thoughts and feelings. This trend seems to be changing for the better since I experienced my first miscarriage in 2005.

This work does not pretend to offer any answers, offer any hope, or offer any reasons. All I can do is help narrow the questions for those who haven’t had the experience, and broaden them for those that have. I’m not sure I believe in answers. Do I really want to know why I would experience four miscarriages in eight years? What do I think I could be told that would make me rejoice, or even make me okay with it? I can accept that things are the way they are; I can’t accept that it’s okay. And I don’t have to to be okay myself.

In between exploring topics relating to miscarriage, including pregnancy, birth, adoption, aging, death, and loss, we will also follow stories of a few friends whose experiences I have been privileged to play some part in. It is true that the more you lose, the more you gain. These gains do not offset or fill the losses, but are felt, usually in turns, as deeply and widely as the losses. None of these stories is finished. Even as I am writing this introduction, I am writing more portions of the stories, because they are still being lived, and always will be.

Memory eternal.