“Oh, You’re Going to Keep It!?”

My sister and her two sons

When I was sixteen years old my mother and father announced to my three brothers and me that we were going to have an addition to our family.  My mom was now pregnant at 43 years old.  My parents hadn’t had any additional children for about a decade.  Everyone was truly surprised—really a bit stunned—by this latest news!

My mother went to an ob-gyn for an initial visit.  When she returned I could see that she was visibly shaken.  My mother and father were debating whether or not they should continue using the doctor that she had just seen.  My mom’s former doctor—the one who had delivered some of my siblings—had retired some years ago and she had to choose someone else for the care and delivery of her next baby.

I later learned the reason for their immediate concern.  It was the doctor’s troubling statement during my mom’s office visit:  “Oh, you’re going to keep it!?”  I guess that he thought that she had come to him to abort the child.  This was the furthest thing from my parents’ intentions—no matter how old my mother was.

This “it”, my sister Cathy—the only sister that I have—now has two children of her own.  She and my mom are extremely close.  The two little grandchildren, the youngest of the ten, are just so adorable (objectively speaking, of course!) and truly keep my mom going day after day.

I often think of what life would be like without my sister and, consequently, without her two children.  What if another tragic decision had been made so that “it” would be all that she was known as, or referred to, by those trying to deny that she ever existed in the first place?

I once wrote a poem trying to express my feelings over this loss of potential—a human life, a human person never given the opportunity to live.  I have thought about “it” over and over again since the horrific trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell hit the Philadelphia news.

I have already put this poem to a basic tune and hope to have it as a completed song someday.

I Cried

I cried—no one heard me

Yet I cried—

For I was inside

Of my mother’s womb.

I longed to be held in her arms,

To be fondled and caressed,

To take milk from my mother’s breast

And to laugh.

Such beauty and warmth of life

I could enjoy,

Play with my first toy

And begin to love.

I could leave my print on the world:

Wisdom to span the ages,

As the knowledge of sages

Of years past.

Still, more than this all, I long for life

--That gift God-given—

And the chance to live in

His created world.

I cried—and no one heard me

For I was inside of my mother’s womb.

Little did I know it would be my tomb.

I cried.

© 1982 Edward F. Namiotka