Hope and other dangerous pursuits

Hope always triumphs over experience...and love is stronger than death.

I forget who spoke these words initially, but that word "always" is one that I "always" tell students to avoid. It is an absolute - an unchangeable, unshakeable, fact - and nothing is truly absolute. And yet, in the uncertainty of life, I am aching for something to be absolute -- something to be unchanging, constant. And so, I decided I needed to focus on hope.

Hope is a concept that I don't remotely understand. It's undefinable to me because it is so abstract that there is nothing concrete about it. There is no hoping for something that you have, something that you can taste and see and touch. Hope, by its very definition, requires the absence of something and the deep depressing desire for that thing to become a reality.

I hope to have a baby -- a healthy, whole, living, breathing, perfect child that I birthed.

For me, this is not a reality. I understand that I gave birth, but right now, birth signifies nothingness more than it signifies something. And now, in the midst of grieving, I so long for a birth experience that brings tears of joy rather than of agony. I never expected to birth children that I didn't see. I never expected for my children to die before I did. But that is my reality. That is my absolute. But I don't want my absolute to become my always.

I want hope to become my always.

Right now, I can honestly say that I am terrified to hear the autopsy results next week. I am scared that the doctor will give us a percentage that is higher than we can risk, and in doing so, tell us that it's not safe for us to birth children of our own. I am scared to death because when it comes right down to it, all I want to be is a wife and a mom. I love my career; I love to teach. But in reality, all I've ever wanted is a family of my own. Granted, families are built in many ways and perhaps it is wrong for me to so desperately want children that come from my own body, but I do. And I'm scared that I might never get my wish.

But I hope that I do. And I so hope that for me, hope will triumph over this nightmarish experience and that, no matter the outcome, I will find some sense of calm and peace. Until then, please keep praying for us. We need it.