I want to talk about selfless love and how it erupted in my life within my greatest heartache. In less than a week it will be exactly three years since 8 fucking words split my life into before/after. “I’m sorry, it’s true, there is no heartbeat”. A chasm the size of the universe appears instantly between who you were one second before and who you are now and will become from this second forward. But I want to talk about the love that also instantly appears. In that moment you literally can’t function. You are in shock. Your limbs don’t work, your brain doesn’t work, there is nothing but searing ass pain that is indescribable and all encompassing. So I still have a hard time with remembering the details on how events happened. They’re fuzzy. But I know some time had passed, I think I was in a hospital room already and not the ultrasound room anymore when this scenario started but I could be wrong. I needed my people to come to me but I couldn’t fathom a way to get them there. My only child was dead, inside my body, and I had to deliver her. I was in Worcester at UMass. I was not going to call my mother on the phone 6 months after my dad died and tell her her granddaughter was also dead. I knew where my mom was. She was out buying a new car. She was at the Toyota place over by Rt 70 and Rt 2. There was no way in hell I was doing that to my mom. My brothers? My friends? At work? Everyone knew where I was. My pregnancy with Shaylyn was super high risk. She had Turner syndrome and pregnancy itself is just dangerous for Turner’s girls (another topic for another day). I had appointments every single Thursday at the same time. I always talked to specific people right after every single one. I don’t know if I was late calling or early calling and Idk it was a shit show. “I” called my sister in law, Lisa first. I put that in quotes because I don’t even know if I couldn’t physically get my hands to use my phone or where my phone even was, if I had it, but for whatever reason, Shaylyn’s father actually called her. I regret that forever because it was a such a clusterfuck. First he kept using his full name which no one ever used so she didn’t know who was even calling. I don’t know what was even said or if I got on the phone ever. I have no clue but I know it was bad. But this girl. She is an angel on this earth. For a little background not only did my dad die six months earlier, he died one week after his granddaughter, my niece, Lisa’s second child, was born. Her father died just 4 years before, just weeks after his grandson, my nephew, Lisa’s first child was born. So as a family we had had a lot in the surrounding years to this. But she, a 6 month postpartum, exclusively breastfeeding, actively grieving woman did things for me I will never even comprehend. She took the responsibility from me and took it upon herself to first find her husband, my brother Jon, break his fucking heart, get him home, find my mother in person, break her fucking heart and get them both to me. She did that over and over and over again for me. So that I didn’t have to. She got all of my people. All my brothers, my friends, our whole family and she brought them to me. She brought me love and comfort and she took from me the extra heartache of having to break every single person we love in ways none of us had ever been broken. She brought my people and she stayed with me. She stayed and went to depths of hell with me during labor and delivery that no one should ever have to go to. She pumped breast milk in some who fucking knows room in UMass and she trekked it to her mother on ice to feed her daughter while she left me for the least amount of time possible….in the most insane raging thunderstorms in my recent memory. She protected me and kicked people out of my room that were making the worst possible situation somehow even worse. She protected my mother from those same people. She called funeral homes and churches for me. She spoke to the nurses and doctors. She did all of these things out of love for me and to spare me pain. She took that part on herself. Something that will never leave her. She did that out of love for me and love for Shaylyn. She hurt herself in ways I’ll never know to save me any amount. And she’s still here. And so are all my people that she brought with her. She knew which ones to bring. That is selfless love. That is what this world needs more of 💜🐳💜.