The Things We Do for Love...

"Like walkin' in the rain and the snow, when there's nowhere to go,
And it's feelin' like a part of you is dyin',
And you're searchin' for the answer in her eyes.
You think you're gonna break up, then she says she wants to make up...
The things we do for love!"

I like to listen to Oldies in the car, "great music from the 60s and 70s," is how this particular station bills itself. I was pretty much out of rock 'n' roll by the 70s, so a lot of this stuff is new to me; but I like the way it addresses modern life, even if I don't agree with much of what it says.

For the past weekend, I've had this particular song rattling around in my head. It reminds me of so many things: "Walking in the rain and the snow" reminds me of how my son must have felt when his girlfriend broke up with him, with very little warning, it seems. I think he's recovering now, but at the time, I think he felt sandbagged. And then, of course, there's this past weekend, when the whole family is "walking in the rain and the snow when there's nowhere to go," muddling around in an emotional fog, trying to come to grips with something that should never have happened -- but it seems it happens to quite a few folks. I'm talking, of course, about the miscarriage. Knowing that there's a whole army of women out there who cherish the memory of someone they knew for all too short a time, doesn't help at all.

But "the things we do for love...." The hardest part of these past several months, going back to when Ruth and Chris broke up, has been not saying anything about it. Well, yeah, I did vent a bit here, thinking, in my naivete, that it was a "safe place," since neither of them (as far as I knew) knew about this blog -- still don't know how they found out about it, but I take no responsibility for the flap that ensued. They weren't *supposed* to know about it, and as far as I'm concerned, I did my best to keep my feelings from them.

But I'm finding that this isn't going away, any more than the loss of my prospective grandchild will go away. I find myself working at my embroidery and thinking about Ruth, and how much I looked forward to sharing this skill with her, since she professed herself interested in embroidery and knitting. I was really looking forward to sharing a lot of things with her, and now, that's out of the picture. But I still find myself thinking about it, and gradually I'm coming to realize: I lost something, too, when that relationship went south. I really liked this girl; there was a lot to like.

And now, with the loss of the baby, I'm being asked to put a lid on myself again, not to share in my daughter's grief, just because I've never had a miscarriage. That's not the point. The point is, this is my child who is suffering, and I wish she'd let me close enough just to cry with her. Then again, this being my daughter, she's not someone who shares grief easily; when she broke up with her last serious boyfriend before her husband, it was six months before I found out that he had dumped her. She has someone to share her grief with, the most appropriate person of all: her husband.

But I'd at least like to note that she isn't the only one grieving over the loss of her baby. Chris isn't the only one grieving over the loss of Ruth. Oh, drat the things we do for love!