Be still my mother’s heart.
This is going to talk about menstrual cramps, why lie?
I’m reminded each month since my husband’s death of my ability to still have children. Cranky PMS, menstrual cramps and the regular “gift” each month – the wonderful reminder that if I am honest, I have previously cherished, because it reminds me of my potential ability to bring life into the world.
However, the last four months have not been the most celebratory of days as this gift has been delivered. Now, those of you that know me already know that Hubs and I were very fickle when it came to whether or not we were going to have children together. He, having been married previously (and assuming that he’d be married to her forever), took steps to insure that they wouldn’t have any more (she already had 3, they had 1 together). So for us to undergo this would require that he have that teeny operation reversed. He would rub my belly and whisper, “We should have a baby.” Sometimes he was serious… sometimes he was just fishing to see what I would say. As time went on, he and I just simply accepted the fact that we weren’t going to have children together.
This photo was taken after I was told congratulations by a stranger in a bookstore. I wasn’t pregnant but was obviously slouching too much:
Now that he’s gone, this mother’s heart aches for a child that deep down I think I really wanted to give him. Each month this “gift” arrives as a reminder that he and I will never have a child together and that just hurts. “Did I squander my time with him?,” I ask sometimes. “Should I have pushed forward harder when we were both in baby-mode?”
I’ll never know.
