Pretending

I have been bustling about the house this evening tidying up. Brad just gives me his knowing smile about my "busyness", and I continue on my way. It feels good to set the house aright, my little world aright. And then, with the children tucked in bed and every other room in order, I head to my bedroom to finish my work. I see Brad holding something in his hand, a small gray box. He hands it to me. Everything stops. I've known this was coming but it doesn't matter. I am brought back to reality, to the pain and the joy and the tragedy and the beauty of my boy Sully. My finger runs over the tiny (actual)imprint of Sully's foot on a small silver charm. I turn it over and see his name and his birthday. I weep all over again in that room where I held his tiny frame for the last time in this life. Brad holds me. I tell him how sometimes I want to pretend that none of it ever happened, that I was never pregnant, that we didn't lose our third child. Perhaps that was the bliss of my bustling, that for those moments I could make myself forget, make myself believe that I was my old self doing my old routine, that my heart had not been ripped from me and sent to heaven. Brad tells me that maybe it's OK to sometimes pretend, that maybe that's just what we have to do to get by sometimes.