Free Three Minus One: Stories of Parents' Love and Loss by Jessica Watson

to buy whatever roses they still had in their coolers. When I got home, I pulled each rose from its stem, and carefully separated the velvety petals from one another. I put them all in a big plastic bag, pulled on my big snow boots and down coat, then picked my way through the snow to the center of our yard. For twenty minutes, I walkedaround and around in my oversized boots, packing down the snow until I’d made a heart-shaped valentine for Forrest that was fifteen feet in diameter. When I had it just right, I took the rose petals and spread them out evenly inside the huge heart. Their redness was soft and brilliant against the crisp white ground. I thought to sprinkle snow over them to keep them from blowing away, but when I rubbed my mittens together, the snow froze into tiny balls of ice. They collected like marbles in the bowl of each petal and quickly froze my Valentine’s Day heart in place. It was perfect.
    As I stood in the snow admiring my valentine for Forrest, I wondered if pilots flying overhead could see it. I knew if they did, they’d probably understand.

    When I finally got back inside I felt good. My Valentine’s Day plan had worked, and I was full of loving Forrest. I’d discovered over the previous year that expressing my love for him out loud was a good habit even in his absence. Something about believing he was there and could see or hear me replaced my loneliness with love. So periodically throughout the day, I went to the window to look at my valentine. It was so beautiful out there in the snow. Late in the afternoon, though, I looked out and was stunned. My valentine was gone. I didn’t know what to think. But then I saw something that made me laugh. Leading up to and away from my rose-petal heart was a single track of deer prints. That deer had eaten my valentine!

    A few months later, my friend Lisa called out of the blue. I’d met her the year before. Her husband Teddy had been killed in the World Trade Center attacks, so she and I had a strong connection because of our mutual grief. In a moment of curiosity and desperation, she’d gone to a psychic that morning. She told me that about halfwaythrough the session, the psychic suddenly paused and said, with some confusion, “Who is Bar? What is Bar? Could it be Barb? No, they’re saying ‘Bar.’ Do you know who Bar is? I see a little boy. He’s holding a man’s hand. They’re saying something about a deer and some rose petals. Does this mean anything to you?”
    I laughed again and shook my head. Then I told her about my valentine.
    Adapted from
The Present Giver
, self-published in 2011.

Miscarried
    Kristin Camitta Zimet
    I have no place to lay you down,
my quiet one, gone without enough
living. No round-bellied jar
to fold my hands around, glazed
with soda ash that stings the fingers,
scalds the surface with a pock of tears.
    No stopper to hold in this little
heap, this dry dissolve: skeletal
roses, brittle fern, baby’s breath,
scent purely imagined. No matter
what I curl my mind around, this
ribbon unties. I turn and turn
    and have no nest to settle in.
I cannot keep air enough under
my feathers, or form a cove
around you. Angels swerve away
from this unripe annunciation,
this shut ground. Only my beasts,
    in their diminishment, are trying.
The dog with his crooked back
inches his wolf skull underneath
my palm. The deaf cat digs
her way up, licks my cheek
with a flesh-clearing rasp.
    First published in
Quiddity.

Lost Friends and the Big Lie
    Mike Monday
    O ne of the great things about the
Return To Zero
project is the blog on the movie’s website, which contains some of the most heartfelt writing I have ever read. I suppose that should be expected, as parents would naturally be moved to eloquence when sharing their stories of loss with a community that empathizes and cares. The blog is a remarkable forum to help accomplish the mission statement of the movie—to break the silence that surrounds stillbirth.
    My blog entry from