The leaf

Tears have spilled over onto my soggy pillowcase. Their damp, unwanted presence seep into my dream and interrupt my subconscious wanderings. I rub my sleep weary eyes in an attempt to reorient myself in time.  Where am I ? In my last thought I was old and then in the next scene I was young. My body turns and morphs somewhere to an inbetween indeterminate age.  "This is so silly, why can't my body make up it's mind if I'm young, old or somewhere in between?" And then , "Because you are all of those things! You are young, you are old, and not only in between,  you are eternal!"

"Oh of course I am!Mr. Sandman!!Ok, if that's possible then take me back to the place where my kids were little, cuz that was the hardest yet best time of my life! So I teleported, actually Dave drove me in our old teal dodge van  which suddenly had the magical properties of a time machine, complete with the messy food stained carseats. We flew back to the beautiful white house we built on riverside drive in Burley, Idaho.

 With our new found perspective, we ended up in our old  yard.  There was the beautiful maple 🍁  tree we had planted as a young sapling! I had chosen to home it near the front of the house so I could watch it's seasonal leaves change and flutter in the wind. It morphed in front of our eyes! It was young, then it was a tower of trunk and waving leaves, and then it became something in between. I had to grab my husband, my Dave, my soulmate to orient myself through all these shifting scenes and times. I shouted, "You remember the kids too, don't you?? Their fuzzy heads, their messy diapers, their crying, their laughing, those were our babies and now they are gone! Why the heck did they have to grow up! "  He hugged me back just as fiercely and said, " Of course I remember those fuzzy heads, diapers, and all the inbetweens, but it's OK they are old now because they are ours forever". An orange leaf from our beautiful maple floated down toward our feet. We picked it up and carried it back to our messy but beloved time machine.

 Yesterday there was a young couple who came into labor and delivery.  The helicopter had flown  them in as her water had broke at 22 weeks.  Her umbilical cord had prolapsed and the crew had rushed to get her to our facility.  One life flight paramedic stayed outside her door and said, "I got the heart tones the whole time. The 120's, strong, regular heart beat."  He didn't say, but I knew he was lurking by the door to hear that heart beat again.  The doctor pulled the ultrasound bedside and we all hovered close to the screen. It's only happened twice in my over thirty year career, but all twenty of us in that room yesterday saw the agonal beats, the last flutters of that beating heart  in the babies chest.  When the beating disappeared our tears fell, I patted the patients leg and I brought her husband closer to her.  We solemnly moved that family to a different room.  We put the perfunctory leaf sign on the door to alert everyone that this patient had suffered a "loss". 

 But now I also remember,  that the leaf means she still has that baby~

 forever.