What I Couldn’t Give

They say there are no atheists in a foxhole. That’s pretty much hooey but I will say, this atheist/agnostic/whatever you want to call me has certainly spoken in more spiritual terms since my sister died.
We all look for comfort in times of loss because it is the way we cope with the overwhelming sense of grief and inability to control the world. I personally refer to my sense of the divine as the Universe because it is simply this interconnected merging and changing of energy that exists. Physics states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, so just because a person’s consciousness is no longer a part of their mass of ever arising and dying atoms (their body) doesn’t mean it ceases existing, it simply ceases to exist in the way that we recognize it. Comforting, yes? Well, for me it is.
So, as someone without the specific comfort of a deity to request from or expect miracles of, the death of my sister has brought to the forefront the one request I couldn’t fulfill for her before her death. She wanted me to be pregnant or have a baby. She laid crying in my arms only a couple days before she left us and wept for the child she wouldn’t meet.
As a couple dealing with infertility, Racer K and I know that it may take a “miracle” and/or extensive medical intervention to give us our baby. I weep that my child will never be held by her aunt, who wanted her as much as we want her (or him, as it may be).
The aspect of the divine in this is those saying perhaps my sister will, in her transformed spiritual presence, become or create that child. I’d laugh about her reincarnating as my child because that’s frightening if you knew what a loud, troublesome child my sister was. There are now dreams among friends and family that my sister is bringing us the baby we want so much. There’s a part of me that wants to believe and then there’s the part of me that knows what obstacles we face.
There are truly atheists in foxholes because facing all of this cancer battle, I never once prayed to some dude in the clouds to save my sister… but perhaps because of the law of conservation of energy and perhaps some shifting hormones or whatever, perhaps this little miracle could come true.