Fate and Family

I imagine my mother Rosemary laying in the hospital bed, looking at the ceiling, contractions coming and going. What was she feeling? Anger? Sorrow? Regret? Delivering her third child should have been a joyous occasion, but I can only think she was miserable and empty in that moment. Her husband should be here. Her husband would be here, if not for his death the previous August, just as she was finishing her first trimester. The baby coming on Valentine’s Day was an added twist of cruel fate to what had happened 7 months prior. That baby was me.