For years, I believed my husband had helped me survive the grief of never becoming a mother.
Joshua had spent almost a decade holding my hand through every negative test, every doctor’s appointment, every quiet drive home where neither of us knew what to say. Eventually, we stopped talking about children altogether. I buried myself in work, he took up fishing, and our too-quiet house became something we learned to live inside.
Then, almost overnight, he changed.
The first time I noticed it, we were walking past a playground near our neighborhood. Children were climbing, shouting, laughing, falling, getting back up again. I kept walking, but Joshua stopped.
“Look at them,” he said softly. “Remember when we thought that would be us?”
I swallowed. “Yeah.”
He didn’t move. His eyes stayed fixed on the kids. “Does it still bother you?”
I looked at him then, really looked, and saw something in his face I hadn’t seen in years. Hunger. Grief. Fear.