Kit would have been 8 years old this August. That is all I know about my first grandchild, who was lost to abortion.

There are so many things I could say, about hurt, anger, loss. But it all comes down to simply this: I miss my grandchild more every day.

I named the child, I mourned it. On my right forearm is a small fox tattoo, to keep him/her close to me.

I have a small, worn copy of a book of poetry titled “Celestial Interim,” a memento of a dead friend. In it are keepsakes of all my beloved dead: my mother, my two brothers, various extended family, friends, many of them dead before their time, but still, they had their time on this earth, and were well loved.

There is no keepsake for Kit but a poem I copied out on a blank page:

“When I think of you, I die, too. In my throat, bereft like yours, of air, no sound is left, nothing is there, to make a word of grief.”

All those children, all that love, lost to the world, and we are immeasurably poorer without them.

Zoe Gaston

Cape Elizabeth

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