The gift in her death

Trigger warning: Mention of death and loss

Photo by sanjiv nayak on Unsplash

1. I have always been an outsider. Be it in a gang of girlfriends or medical statistics. Unlike a glove, I never fit.
2. I was the one the other two gossiped about. My choices were the most discussed. Never in front of me.
3. Difficult, opinionated, not subservient, and too much are ways in which I have been described ‘to me’ by others. All accompanied by a peal of uncomfortable laughter.
4. If there is a large group of people gathering, I am giving it in writing that I wouldn’t blend in. Never on purpose.
5. I turned out to be that 1% we all assume doesn’t exist when we sign a medical risk waiver.
6. ‘It won’t happen to me’, I had thought in my attempt to blend in.
7. It did.
8. ‘What sort of pregnant woman did not know that her baby wasn’t kicking?’ questioned the doctor. Even here, I didn’t belong.
9. I was the sort that didn’t know, unlike all the other women in the world who were so far along in their pregnancies. (Another score)
10. ‘We found nothing wrong with the fetus in the biopsy’ declared the genetic expert most empatheticly.
11. ‘It happens in only 1% of the cases’, she repeated, proving my point again.
12. Years later, I named her Tara.
13. Even in her absence, she makes sure no other woman feels the need to blend in when what she really wants to do is to be heard and understood.