Bring on the rain

How do I answer? Someone asked me today how many children I have. I don't know what to say. Do I tell her about the two I have at home, do I go into long details about my missing third, what do I say? How do I answer? From now on, the world is divided into before and after, people who know, and people who don't. People who knew my daughter and people who didn't. No one I meet from now on will ever be able to get to know my daughter; she'll be a photo on the wall and a "oh that's sad" and that's all.

I'm walking down the road and it's a beautiful day and the birds are singing and the sky is blue, the flowers in the gardens are at their very best, bumblebees are buzzing merrily and children are playing games. How can this be? Where is the blasted heath, where is the storm and the wind and the rain and the floods? How are there so many people all around? Where is my desolation, my isolation, my separation? Woven in and anchored too firmly in living. I cut my hand on Thursday, when my child was still alive. And now it's nearly healed. How can it heal? How can my skin be mending, knitting together, how can this go on? Chances are there won't even be a scar, that this perfect miracle of regrowth will play its part in my life - and if so, how did it bypass my daughter?

Tia