The Silent Sorority

In my mind, he was graduating high school on a football scholarship and enjoyed racing midget cars.

On my calendar, he was 13 weeks gestation.

In my womb, he'd stopped growing at 9 weeks and had begun to "reabsorb". He never even got big enough to be a "he", yet I had named him John Robert and planned out his life.

He was an unexpected pregnancy. His father had lost a four-year-old son ten years prior and was determined never to love again, never to feel that loss again. In the weeks we knew of my pregnancy I had gently encouraged his father to open up and trust in the future.

By the time I worked my way through the maze of health care for the uninsured, that future had already changed.

People who have not experienced pregnancy don't realize how quickly that being grows in your mind. I am sure even fathers don't quite fully understand.

When the doctor told me on the phone that the embryo was reabsorbing and needed to be removed, my first thought was, "Why?" My second thought was of my sister, who had experienced this too many times. "How did she survive this?" I think I even asked her that when I phoned her from the fetal position on the kitchen floor where I remained, crying, for several hours.

I'd already been blessed with two beautiful children, so I was one of the lucky ones. I wasn't being denied motherhood, I was only losing one "perhaps". The dream of another being. I could heal and keep going.

His father relapsed into his world of walls and is probably still there now.

John Robert is thirteen now in the world in my mind. There is no football there, no race cars, but so much love and peace. I am sure I commune with him often in my dreams; are those the ones where I wake up feeling so loved?

I think of him much more often than some would expect, those who don't know it firsthand. John Robert would have been born in the year between my nieces. I look at them and see the place he would have taken in their lives. They don't even know he once was here.

Sometimes I wonder if there is a place in the next world where the almosts and not quites gather and share stories of their families. In my beliefs, I know they often recycle and find another place to land in our lives, which makes me think the akashic records must be very confusing! How complicated to keep track of the past, present and might-have-been lives!

I also wonder how big is the sorority of mothers with an empty spot on their laps. When asked we speak of the living, "I have two daughters." Only the doctor's office asks for the full count. Even with friends, we might admit to the number of living and dead children, but we rarely bring up those that are lost before viability. Yet they exist, and they are as real in our hearts as those who made it.

So, here is to the silent sorority, the mothers who have never had the joy of hearing that first cry.

Namaste.