i’ve always known

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that leanne wanted to be a mother more than anything. more than pizza. more than being in love. more than a great job. more than having good friends. more than traveling the world. more than snowshoeing. more than dinner for two. more than a wedding in a barn. more than a pashmina scarf. more than anything.
it’s 5am. the ice crystals cover the windows. on the floor there is a plate of wax with a black stub of wick.

from reading, i know there are many of these, all around the world. something released into the atmosphere. for us.

today, we are losing our child. and leanne is losing a chance to, yes again, be a mother….something that we worked so hard for, saw doctors about, cried when her period came every month that we did not want it to.

3 years when lee was pregnant with lydia, they found a mass by ultrasound. it was shaped, unpoetically, like a quarter hot dog. they couldn’t do anything about it then. they’d look after the pregnancy and see what it was. 6 weeks post-partum they looked. it was gone. 6 months post partum, it was still nowhere to be found.

artifact, they said.

a shadow.

yes, of something.

when leanne came out of the mri monday the doctor who had found the mass 3 years ago was standing in the room, crying. you know already that the cancer had spread to her pelvis, her abdomen. but there was something else, a 9.5cm x 5 cm mass, wrapped around her spleen. a shape, yes, like a quarter hot dog.

we’ve all heard it said that our strengths are our greatest weaknesses.

but to say that the things that we want most will kill us maybe has not been said.

family, and to be loved, how warm it is under the covers and the ice crystals in the window.

kill us?

that shadow. that thing that comes and goes away and comes back again. when the want is in the certain position over the life.

how badly does leanne want to be a mother? bad enough to stick with me for 10 years. but even more. so much more. so much that her body gives up on almost everything to shine a light on the baby in her.

and all the other lights go dim.

of course, lee is a mother already. and not just to lydia. but to me, in a way, and to so many of you. she can be that mother, safely.

and that is enough.

and what is enough is the chance that our child, by dying, is giving.

it’s giving lee the chance to be that mother still, to me, to lydia, to all of us.

understand that.

hold it.

show it to a shadow.

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