A Hope Not A Promise

She was sitting in her balcony, with a hot chocolate mug in her hand, watching the last sunset of 2015, wondering how life has changed in the last few months. All her friends were to go for the New Year’s Eve party, but she had decided to stay home this 31^stdec. As she watched the sun slithered behind the cloud clad mountains, so did she slip into the flashback!!

Just a day before the Festival of Lights, Diwali as we all Indians call, she had visited the gynecologist thinking she had some hormonal issues, hence did the blood test followed by an ultra sound.

“It can’t be pregnancy!!”  She told the radiologist. ”May be some cyst or an ineffective organ needs to see its way out from my body!!”  She added laughing.

The next minute, what she heard was very familiar sound …. “Heartbeats”!!! Yes it was the sound of the “heartbeats”.

She looked towards the monitor screen dazed, shocked and happy all at the same time.  The radiologist standing there smiling looking straight into her eyes…….

 They drove back home, with “Pin Drop Silence in the Car “.The silence was finally broken.

“Does this all mean that I am going to be an elder bro”? Asked her 10 year old while getting out from the car’s rear seat.

She and her husband preferred not say anything as yet to their son till enter the house.

She was happy and so was her husband. They sat and discussed for a while and finally settled down a bit. She was wobbly, quivering but she had to share it with her “Angel Friend “.

She dialed her number.

In few minutes, two of her friends were at the door hugging her. 

Since then it has been time of bliss. She has been dreaming about a complete family. She has been dreaming about a girl child.

“Mom !!! There’s someone to see you”! her son said. And she returned to the present .She got up rather carefully from the balcony chair and made her way to the hall room.

She had received a call from the hospital that the long awaited; few pending test results were ready.

Time had passed and now she was in the 19^th week She was young she thought, if 42 was new 22 as told by her angel friend..Her first pregnancy was all ok, some normal placental issues were there but nothing was wrong, so she was sure all is going to be fine this time too. She had almost passed her 1^st trimester being completely unaware that she was pregnant. She had not taken and precaution, which needs to be taken and nothing had gone wrong. Her immense faith in god made her believe that nothing can go wrong now.

“Ma’am the doctor is waiting for you “, the lady at the front desk counter told her while handing over the printed report.

“Oh!! But she doesn’t even know that we are here to collect the report “she replied while going through her reports, trying to understand the medical jargons.

“Yes! Ma’am she left a message for us, that when you come to collect the reports, we should direct you to her”, replied the lady without taking her eyes off her computer.

“Thank you”, she and her husband responded in chorus made their way to the elevator.

The room on the first floor was full of happy pregnant ladies. They waited for a while, and then the doctor, called them in the cabin.

She and her husband were curious to know about the reports.

They wished the doctor, and with a brief eye contact and a smile, “doctor, hope all is ok? Asked the husband sitting next to his wife.

“ Hmm !!! it does not look too good “ the doctor replied. The reports state , “ Trisomy 21 “ is above cut of range, which means that there is a very high risk that the baby is not normal.  I can’t guarantee, that the baby at the time of delivery would be a normal kid”, she added.

She and her husband , staired at the doctor in disbelief. No genetic history , the first kid is a normal kid, no family history of abnormality than how could this happen. She asked the doctor.

Doctor said,” Yes to my surprise also!!!”, But we can’t ignore the report. I suggest we do some further tests which unfortunately are not done here, I suggest you go to your home country ”.

They took the next day’s flight to the motherland, with wet eyes, but with lot of hope and faith.  She was confident that the test reports were wrong, the pathology had goofed up big time, and she needs to be doubly sure before they come to any decisions.

They did the entire tests including the other few tests in India, and the results arrived in two days.

When they walked in the doctor’s cabin, he looked at them and confirmed their worst fear.

The reports were 98.9 percent positive, meaning she had a Down syndrome kid. No further tests or surgeries could change what was already done.

 Pregnancy is a gamble, who said it was a guarantee.

They knew what had to be done, a decision which killed them a thousand times, and it will keep killing them all their life.

 Yes the baby might live, but that’s not the life they had chosen for their kid.

Nobody told what was inside her was just “A HOPE NOT A PROMISE “.

This is “HER” story, and it might have no significance to any!!!

But it did teach me Few Lessons!!!!!

We all go through painful times in our lives.

We start expecting a lot in life, but life like pregnancy is very unpredictable. Expectations are the root cause for all heartache. And more worse is the hope. Hope is a very dangerous thing, not always but sometimes hopes just sets up for huge disappointments.  Once you start hoping, with each passing day your expectations increase as well. So the best thing is “no expectations no disappointments”.

How great it would be if the things just turned out the way you had planned it, but it does not happen all the time. Things do go wrong, and they don’t get always fixed. You can’t put it together like it was before.  

The result is you loose your smile, you end up crying, and you end up in Grief. There is no specific rule book to grief; grief is as individual as your fingerprint. Your grief can never end, but it does changes. If you are going through grief, never think you are weak or you lack the faith. Just remember one thing that if you are in grief you are paying the price of love.

The pain will stay with you, in your heart as a memory.

 Generally grief and pain tend to change you as a person; you either get bitter or better. Whether you let it make you a better person or tear you down is going to be your decision, fate cannot decide that.

I feel the experience of grief has neither  any rules nor has any shortcuts. What needs to be done is forget about the past, like the trees shed the dead leaves and creates new ones. It will take its own time; it’s not that you are going to come out of the pain in a day. It might take you days, weeks, months or years!!!

Take your time!!!  Strive to become a better version of what you were created.  Refuse to be held by pain.

Breathe life!!!  Dream Again!!!  Let the hope and faith get stronger!!!

Show that you can overcome!!!

Because, Without Faith, Hope and Trust... there is no promise.