so beautifully described

Jess over at A Little Blog About Big Infertility wrote about Laura Bush and her struggle to have a baby. I will be honest, I never knew this, but I am not surprised. Infertility surrounds us, but many are reluctant to share their struggles. Jess included an excerpt from Laura Bush's book and I wanted to share it as well. I have never heard the longing for a child so beautifully described. Her words encompass the feelings and emotions that we all experience and puts it in such a way for others to understand. Here is the excerpt from her book:

For some years now, the wedding invitations that had once crowded the mailbox had been replaced by shower invites and pink-or-blue-beribboned baby announcements. I bought onesies or rattles, wrapped them in yellow paper, and delivered them to friends. I had done it with a happy wistfulness, believing that someday my time, my baby, would come. George and I had hoped that I would be pregnant by the end of his congressional run. Then we hoped it would be by the time his own father announced his presidential run, then by the presidential primaries, the convention, the general election. But each milestone came and went. The calendar advanced, and there was no baby.

The English language lacks the words to mourn an absence. For the loss of a parent, grandparent, spouse, child or friend, we have all manner of words and phrases, some helpful some not. Still we are conditioned to say something, even if it is only “I’m sorry for your loss.”

But for an absence, for someone who was never there at all, we are wordless to capture that particular emptiness. For those who deeply want children and are denied them, those missing babies hover like silent ephemeral shadows over their lives.

Who can describe the feel of a tiny hand that is never held?- Laura Bush