That’s like a triple-suck.

It’s the insensitivity that would be worse, I think.

Your brain can deal with facts, I think; you can adjust to what is real. You cannot have a child because you had ovarian cancer. Those are facts.

But the judgment of others? Insensitive, yes. Ignorant, certainly. Hurtful, I imagine. And, probably, long-lived. 91-years-old, in hospice, with everyone asking if your children will be visiting.

I’m often asked the latter, during my frequent hospitalizations. I am not related to any of the three emergency contacts that I list. Yet many on staff will ask after my children. An assumption that six decades surely would have produced a child.

Meh. Maybe, but not certain. Too long of an explanation.

I may be way off base about what may hurt the most. In The Young Pope there was a married couple and both were sterile. Yet, due to Pius XIII’s intercessionary prayer to the BVM whilst the couple was having intercourse, they were gifted with the miracle of a child (Pius XIII being a Saint). Esther, the sterile mother-to-be, was willing to do, almost, anything to save her marriage, child or no child, but she had faith that Saint Pius XIII could help in her desire for a child. And he did. Via the BVM.

Maybe ya have to be or have been Catholic to understand. Or a believer that the Pope didn’t really die at the end and believe in a Second (Coming) Season.

I don’t believe in ‘faith,’ in principle. My ‘faith’ that the sun will rise tomorrow pre-supposes so many things, great and small, that it should really be called a hunch.

When I was young, there was limbo, so many years removed from ones stay in purgatory for various indulgences, all kinda crap.

Ah, I’m blathering on whilst my caregiver is doing my laundry. Maybe the next time someone questions your motherhood you could say that after serving eight years for 3rd-degree-murder you just weren’t into men much.