It gets easier to deal with, but it doesn't go away.

People still constantly ask when we’re going to have a baby. If they only knew what we’ve been through! Maybe then they wouldn’t ask.

 

But I don’t want the attention. I don’t want anyone to know because I don’t want their sympathy. I don’t want them to say “Oh I’m so sorry” while I nod and say “It’s okay” and follow it up with a moment or two of uncomfortable silence, after which they’ll say one of the insensitive comments I’ve gotten used to hearing from some of the few people who do know what happened.

 

Still, it seems as though people just expect me to be completely over it. Well, I don’t know if that will ever happen. And truthfully, I worry about what it will be like if this should ever happen again.

 

***

 

It’s been five months and two days since we lost our precious baby. In the days that followed, as we held hands and cried in bed together, we resolved to plant a memorial apple tree somewhere on our four acres. We had a place picked out in our back yard, but the proposed privacy fence will get in the way of the sun on our little tree, and then a greenhouse employee informed us that apple trees should be planted as far away from cedars as possible because of something called “cedar rust,” a tree disease that will kill pretty much any apple tree with which it comes in contact. Given the number of cedars on our property, well…then the planting season passed. It looks like we might finally get to plant our tree this spring. I have a feeling we’ll buy our tree from either Lowe’s or a local greenhouse, and I’m quite excited by the knowledge that in a few short months they’ll have their baby trees out.