The measuring stick.

Remember her?

I hope you understand that it was never that I begrudged her – them – their joy. It was that I begrudged us the loss of our own. I saw her as having everything that I, too, should have had during those forty weeks that we both began to count in December, and all those weeks and months and years that would follow. She was the measuring stick by which we would be always able to gauge precisely the profundity of our loss.

We learned this weekend, from mutual friends, that they lost the baby. I don't know the details. It must have happened sometime during the fourth or fifth month.

She and I last spoke four weeks ago but exchanged nothing more than simple greetings and the standard three kisses before I rushed away to my appointment. Maybe it had already happened by then.

I've seen her out and about in our neighborhood, both before and after that chance encounter, but always managed to slow my pace or cross discreetly to the other side of the road, not wanting to face the reminder. The measure. Maybe by then, too, it had already happened.

I saw her as having everything that I, too, should have had. But she doesn't, not anymore, and my heart is so heavy for her.