A good question.

It was suggested to me, in the kindest possible of ways, that perhaps I’m over-reacting.

I’ve asked myself the same thing. I vacillate between two reactions: the first being that this is the most devastating thing I’ve ever lived through; the second that this is, in the grand scheme of things, not that much to bear. I think of what the rest of the world suffers, has suffered, will suffer, and I feel ashamed for my own sorrow, my own self-pity.

***

Before we knew about the missed miscarriage, I asked Gilles if he loved … it. We didn’t call it a baby. It wasn’t a baby, it wasn’t a person – not to us, not yet. It was the beginning of that, of course; it could have been; it would have been, if fate hadn’t followed the path it had to take – but to us, it wasn’t that yet.

He hesitated a moment, not wanting to hurt me with his honesty. “No,” he said. “I love the idea of it. I love what the future holds for us. But I can’t love … it. Not yet. But you know that I will.”

He didn’t hurt me. That was exactly how I felt too.

But losing what the future had held for us, without knowing what it would have been; preparing to love that much and that deeply before learning that nothing would exist to be to be loved … I couldn’t have imagined the pain.

***

I watched this "Momversation" recently. I searched for it; I had wondered if miscarriage had been covered.

“It’s losing a child,” it begins. Pause for emphasis. “It’s losing a child.”

That’s a gripping introduction, certainly, but I don’t agree with it. I don’t mean to minimize the pain of miscarriage – how could I, after what I’ve been living through – but I don’t think it can be equivalent to that of losing a child who has existed beyond mere potential.

So what is it, then?

It’s the loss of a dream, an unending, endless dream of life validated and continued and passed on in a tiny grain of life newly begun.

It’s the loss of a hope, a bottomless wish, a deepest longing that goes beyond simple human desire to the most profound human need.

It’s the loss of a life imagined, as well as of lives imagined: ours as parents. A string of little moments we could have lived that together would have made the lives we want to lead. This, for example. Choosing a family walk as a quotidian tradition to faithfully uphold. Gilles and I can always walk together; together but alone, alone but together. But we’d like – we want – no, that’s not enough; we need, we need – someone else – someone elses – to be by our side.

Perhaps it can be made even simpler: saudade.

Saudade!

***

There would have been somebody and now there won’t.

***

Am I over-reacting? In the face of this, I can't feel any other way.