“As I stared at the letter, my hand started shaking. I found myself holding my breath, paralyzed by the shock of the unexpected. Seeing her name in writing after so many years caught me off guard.”
‘To the parents of Abigail.’ I was shuffling through the junk mail, before tossing it in the trash. But the last letter left me frozen. My heart began racing. I gasped as I read the name.’
‘Your future husband is 2 years old. Will he tell me, ‘Mom, she’s the one!’? It’s hard to believe my place as his mother will be eclipsed by your place as his wife.’
“I will recognize my son’s loyalty is first to you. I will refrain from gossiping about you to family members. I will not harbor a grudge if you tell me, ‘I’m sorry, but we just can’t make that work right now.'”
‘You’ve asked me where I’ve been. You said, ‘I seem off.’ You’ve told me through texts that you miss my posts. I can’t play that role in your life right now.’
“You’re thinking: ‘How are we supposed to know if you don’t tell us?’ It doesn’t work like that, at least not for me. I haven’t been there recently. Have you noticed? I don’t have it in me.”
‘They said your child was being very loud. You knew what I was going to ask. You saw the table I just spoke to pointing at you. I got to your table and you looked at me.’
“I know what I was supposed to say when I went to your table. I was supposed to politely tell you to please not have your daughter yell. I was supposed to offer to move you to another area. I was supposed to offend you by not offending you… I did not do any of that.”
‘Mrs. Fey, I’m sorry for getting in a fistfight during algebra, then calling you the B-word for breaking it up. And what did you do? You showed up at 7 a.m. to work with me one-on-one.’
“My parents were divorced, my father was addicted to painkillers. He was in jail most of high school. My mother and I weren’t getting along. None of this justifies how I acted, and it wasn’t your problem. You made my difficult life bearable.”
‘I saw you hand over your note with sadness in your eyes. You looked at the pharmacist with fear as she read your details. You replied with the most defeated ‘no’ I’d ever heard.’
“I saw your knuckles turn white on that stroller handle bar. I saw you look down on your baby while it was starting to stir. ‘Please don’t cry,’ you whispered.”
‘Are you sure you want to marry her? She comes from a broken home. Her parents are divorced.’
“My heart sank into my stomach as I read those words. They were written in a letter addressed to my soon to be husband.”
‘I wanted to shake her, wake her up, start CPR – surely they could do something, she looks perfect, she could survive at 33 weeks. But it was too late.’
“I felt an immediate uncontrollable sickness and stumbled to the bathroom where I noticed there was blood. I was toppling over and shouted to my husband there was blood and call an ambulance.”
‘To the 18 year old kid I stopped, you were minutes away from an unspeakable Christmas tragedy. If not only killing yourself, you were on your way to killing an innocent person.’
“You said you didn’t realize how fast you were going. That’s a lie. You were scared when I stopped you. You were visibly shaking and breathing hard. Unfortunately, you were scared for the wrong reason.”
‘You hear a terrible crash in your son’s bedroom. He looks like he is sleeping, the TV is upside down across the room. His daddy will shake him. You both scream, ‘Wake up Booboo, wake up!’
“NOTHING can prepare you what you are about to see. You walk to the waiting room, and there is a security guard. ‘Why do they have security?’ A woman is squeezing a bag… a bag that connects to your son’s mouth. ‘SHE IS BREATHING FOR MY SON WITH THAT BAG.'”
