Remembering, and giving thanks

Today is a day when I remember what might have been, what would have been had things happened differently.  It is hard to be too sad about it, given my current state -- almost 23 weeks pregnant with an already much loved little girl.  And in my own reckoning of it all, in what makes me feel better but doesn't necessarily reflect what I believe, I imagine that the baby who might have come today was really this little girl.  But her body didn't quite fit, or wouldn't have been healthy, and so she decided to wait and come later.  I never thought of it that way before the loss, but it was a fashioning of events that gave me comfort in the days and weeks that followed.

I cannot be too sad about today, and what could be in our house, because I know too many others who do not have the solace that we do, in the form of a two-year-old boy and a sister on the way.  Too many who cannot reckon or fashion the events that have transpired in their lives into anything other than grief and disappointment.  So I give thanks for my fertility, not to rub it in the face of those who suffer without it but with them very much in mind, because all of us who conceive so easily ought to give thanks for it repeatedly.

I cannot be too sad about today because my life is too blessed.  With people and good health and fortune and opportunity.  And so I smile.

But still, I remember.