Captain Zimbo

At Sunnyside Medical Center there's a protocol for an intrauterine fetal demise. They put a card on your door with a picture of a leaf with a raindrop on it, so everyone who comes in knows not to ask you giddy questions about nursery color schemes. A social worker comes. They give you a lot of things, too: a packet of literature, a bead bracelet with your baby's name on it. One of the things they gave me was a teddy bear for my about-to-be seven year-old son Jasper. It was white and its arms and legs were seamed to give it the jointed quality of a more expensive Stieff bear. It had kind, sorrowful eyes and a red bow around its neck.

I thought it was both superflous and staggering in its inadequacy. Jasper already has a primary stuffed animal, a gray dinosaur, Finley, given to him when he was a year or so old by my aunt Barbara. Finley has been everywhere, to Louisville and Los Angeles, to Dubrovnik and Munich and Vancouver. He has been left behind in a Best Western in John Day, Oregon, and returned to us by mail at great expense. No stuffed animal could ever supplant Finley. And the unspoken sentiment behind the gift irritated me. 'Sorry you don't get a brother, but here's a lump of cheap polyester plush and fill, made in China by some kids your age, that ought to cheer you up!'

When Jasper said he wanted to name the bear Balthazar my heart froze. Jonathan said no. I don't think he could have endured it, giving the bear Balthazar's name. But then Jasper said he wanted to name the bear Zimbo, which was our nickname for Balthazar when he was in utero, given to him at Thanksgiving by his cousin Phillip. I told Jonathan we had to let him. The name was soon amended, for some reason, to Captain Zimbo.

I was not prepared for how attached I became to Captain Zimbo. I'd heard the thing about bereft mothers' arms actually physically aching for want of a baby to hold, and though that didn't happen, exactly, I did cuddle that bear in a way that I found embarrassing but couldn't help. Every night I would curl up on the couch, wrap myself in the fleece Star Wars blanket and hold Captain Zimbo while I watched Eureka.

Captain Zimbo became Balthazar's avatar, and something about calling him "Captain" set off a chain of associations, of connections. Balthazar became a pilot, in a Sopwith Camel, wearing a leather cap and flying goggles, flying away from me. Like the Red Baron, or Snoopy. He was as intrepid as the World War I flying ace, and as lovable as a cartoon dog, but as unreachable as either. As my yoga teacher Michele had said, he couldn't stay. He'd flown away in his little plane, on a mission I couldn't know or understand. The trouble was, instead of living in my heart as all the supposedly comforting books had said he would, he'd taken half of my heart with him and I was left on the couch gasping for breath, holding a ridiculous yet sympathetic toy.

On Easter Sunday, five days after Balthazar's birth/death, Jasper came down the stairs in the morning eager to find all of the eggs that he knew the Easter Bunny had hidden around the house. Jonathan and I had gone to the toy store on Hawthorne after we picked up Balthazar's ashes from Holman's, trying hard not to look at the jack in the boxes and the blabla lions with their yarn manes. I thought I was doing well, filling that basket. But I had forgotten the eggs.

I broke down and cried when I saw Jasper's disappointment. Poor Jasper came and sat on my lap and patted my arm. "I love you so much and I just want you to be happy!" I wailed. "It's hard times when babies die," said Jasper, sounding more like an elderly lady from Kansas than a six year-old boy. Pat, pat went the hand on my arm.

We sat like that for a few minutes and then tried to get on with Easter morning. Jasper got a new stuffed animal, a Tiger he named Tigy, in his basket and about five minutes later there was violence in the stuffed animal kingdom. Finley, jealous of Tigy's appearance, shot him and was immediately punished with a hard beating with a book. The chocolate lambs, the chocolate bunny and a monkey hand puppet we call Monkey Doctor performed immediate emergency surgery in an attempt to save Tigy's life.

"Finley's been dead for two years," Jasper announced during the surgery. "He's a robot."

"He's dead?" I said, trying to keep my voice neutral in the face of so much carnage. "I had no idea."

"When his mom found out, she didn't even cry," he told me. Finley's mom lived at the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. We had taken Jasper and Finley there at New Year's.

I knew he was contrasting her brave, stoic behavior with my own. After all, all I did was cry. I wanted to hold it together for my son; also to let him know that it's OK to be sad. But at that point, to be honest, the whole thing wasn't entirely under my control.

"Let's get Tigy stitched up," I said, turning my attention to the crisis at hand. Tigy was saved, Finley forgiven, his zombie status forgotten for the moment. We ate chocolate and later went to the beach.

Apparently we both had to work things out on plush toys, just different ones. Thank God for cheap fill and polyester.