:: The S.I.C.L.E. Cell ::

:: Saturday, September 13, 2003 ::

An excerpt from a letter I received (with permission):

"So Tuesday is the day and I feel like I am preparing for something, I've taken the day off from work, informed my roommate to stay out of the house, and I don't know what to do. Part of me wants to do what I would have done if she was here. Last year I freaked my boyfriend out when I told him that all day I wanted go the store and pick up diapers and other baby stuff and pretend like I was a Mom. I wanted to pretend I was buying this stuff for my new baby. I daydreamed I would tell the cashier at the checkout about how beautiful my daughter was and how much everyone just loves her and can't get enough her and how happy I am to be a Mom and just how freaking wonderful it is and just look at me everybody, I'm a Mom!

But somehow this year seems worse. Last year I was wrapped up in me and my pain and my baby and that was it. This year I think about what I have deprived both of our families of. She would have been the first grandchild on both sides. I am thinking of that and of the life that my baby will never have... the love she will never feel or know. I hate that. And I really hate that everyone else acts like she never existed. If I were to die tonight there would only be two things that would prove that she existed, the sonogram next to my bed and the certificate from the Shrine of Holy Innocents that I sent for last year. I keep that in my dresser. It has my baby's name on it, and the folks at the shrine include her name in a prayer the last Sunday of every month in some church in NY. I'm going to go there just so that I can hear someone say her name. I just want my baby. I don't want to be sitting here writing. I want to hold her and know what it feels like to mother my child. I'm sick of sleepless nights and being afraid to fall asleep, wishing for her, wanting her, crying all the time, and being forced to hide my love and grief.

How is it that you have made it this far? I wish that I had known you or women like us while I was pregnant."

How many "women like us" are out there and yet refuse to speak? How many others will follow our footsteps right into the stirrups because our silence gives them no reason not to? How many will we sacrifice to save ourselves?

:: ashli 8:14 AM # ::
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