Echoes

I'm not a napper. No matter how much My Beloved cajoles, I am loathe to lay down on a sunny weekend afternoon and sleep the day away.

I did it when I was pregnant because I was more tired than I thought humanly possible and because I knew it was good for me and Thomas.

But I'm not pregnant, and so I won't nap. And you can't make me.

However, yesterday afternoon I felt myself flagging. Knowing I had a long night at church (singing the Easter Vigil) My Beloved gently suggested that a nap might be a good idea (most likely for my mental health rather than my physical well-being). Exhausted from puttering in the yard and losing sleep earlier in the week, I relented.

I lay down on the couch in the family room and pulled the afghan my Mom made for me over my sleepy self in preparation for a nice, long snooze.

And that's the precise moment my neighbour, out cleaning up his yard from the morning's deck construction, decided to introduce himself to the new neighbours behind them.

I don't know why, but I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm nosy as hell. I lay there in my little cocoon listening to their loud man-voices bounce off the houses and into my family room through the open sliding door. They did the usual introduction stuff and small talk until finally the conversation wound its way around to children.

The new people have a little boy who will be two in May.

Lying there on my couch in the comfort and safety of my own little house I felt my heart shudder in sorrow for the millionth time. If I hadn't miscarried at almost 11 weeks in October 2003, we would have a little soul turning two in May too. And now I know just how big that little soul would be. For as long as they live in that house and for as long as the yards are barren of tall trees to hide what's in them, I will be able to see what we should have had - what we almost had.

Now I know.

I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. Tried not to think of what we've lost. Tried not to know that I'll always carry so much sorrow with me that will bubble to the surface whenever the hell it feels like it.

I'm ridiculously tired of trying to be happy for everyone else while I'm still so sad for me - for us. For Thomas and for our other two little souls who were too small to even have names. We shouldn't have three dead children. No one should.

I should be able to be at peace on my own couch wrapped in my own blanket. Happy voices full of hope have no right to intrude on my safe place.

But they do.

We need more trees, damn it.