Sarah (The Empty Crib)

 

I open the door to the nursery and I look inside at the Looney Toons decorations and all the furnishings.  I silently step inside and my hand goes to my heart.  Tears well up in my eyes and fall down my face.  I should be carrying an infant seat as I enter, but I’m not.  I move to the white crib I so carefully picked out and peer into it.  I see the teddy bear and know that it is the only thing that will be lying in the crib.

I stand there for a while and the pain medication from the procedure I had to remove my dead daughter from my body is wearing off.  It worked on the pain for my stomach, but it did nothing to dull the pain of my broken heart.  I continue to stare into the empty crib and think of all the things that I will not have.  I will not hear my daughter laugh one of those baby belly laughs that makes everyone smile.  I will not hear her call me Mama.  I will never see her first steps, her first day of school or her first dance.  I will never get to help her prepare for her first date, her prom, her high school graduation.  I will never get to see my daughter walk down the aisle with the man of her dreams.  I will never hold her children.

As these thoughts spin in my head, the pain in my belly where my daughter once kicked me is getting to be too much.  Or maybe it’s the pain in my heart – both are becoming unbearable.  I must get off my feet.  I must leave this place – the place that was supposed to be the most joyous room in the house, but that now is the most hellish.  I slowly turn away and close the door.  I do not re-enter it until my husband takes everything down.  It would be two years before the room would be redecorated for the new baby.  Although joyous, I never forget the empty crib with the teddy bear or the life that was supposed to be but wasn’t.