April Showers of Tears

It's not fair to lose a child in the Spring-time. With the sky so bright and clear and the robins' eggs reflecting as they shelter new life. The green of new leaves on trees coming to life are too much for a heart that is flooded with death and good-bye.

No.

A parent should never have to say good-bye to a child in that way. A mother should never have to experience the death of her daughter before even celebrating her birth. No one should ever have to give birth to death.

Yet if it must happen, it should at least happen in winter, when all the world is bitter cold and ready to snap like the mother's heart. When the bare branches and brown earth and grey sky provide the same monochrome emptiness of the arms that should cradle a tiny pink bundle, and the empty belly that should be growing round and full as the robin's egg, and the empty space in the heart that should be filled with dimpled cheeks and rolls of baby thighs and contented milk sighs. Winter, when the cold grey skies weep along-side the mourners.

Not now.

Not in the very season of new life and pastel Easter happiness. Each pink blossom a slap across the face, and each new-hatched chick a new dagger in the soul.