This is a guest post from Ally. You can see all her other guest posts here.
I took an airplane home, pockets full of half used tissues, wearing jewelry that will never quite feel like it’s really mine, and a heart that was healed in one place and ripped apart in another.
My aunt is dying.
The pancreatic cancer moved quick, first taking her pain-free smile, then the color in her cheeks, and then the chemo took her hair. And now her kidneys are failing and the words “final will” and “home medical care” and “hospice” have become household terms and awful realities.
I went to visit my aunt, knowing that it might be for the last time.
We have a lot in common, my aunt and I. We have blonde hair and blue eyes, love to learn, crave the smell of old books. She’s not only my aunt, she’s also my godmother, and she’s a brave one at that. She took me all the way from Chicago to New York when I was only seven, and together we belted Beach Boys songs and suffered through my first bee sting.
And as I realized my own struggle with infertility, I came to understand that we have one more thing in common.
My dear aunt doesn’t have children of her own.
As a child, I always kind of assumed it was a choice- her lifestyle of world traveling and operas and intellectualism and ongoing college classes didn’t really seem terribly child- friendly to me. But as I got older, and as my own infertility journey began, I started to rethink that.
Infertility wasn’t something we talked about, though, so it never really came up, not until last weekend, when I sat by her bedside and held her hand.
One of my greatest, and also most secret, fears surrounding this infertility journey is that I will die alone. I want to leave a legacy of faith and hope and I want to be an influential force in the lives of my children, if I ever have any.
But what if I don’t?
That question pings around my mind and tears holes in my confidence and trust.
What if I don’t have children?
And at the bedside of my precious aunt, as we looked at each other and said with our eyes the things we couldn’t say with our words, I knew.
I am her legacy.
Me, and my sisters, and my cousins- we are her children.
We will carry on her memory, some of her mannerisms, her love for books, her concern for family, her unshakable hospitality, her steadfast and devout faith.
And she will not go to glory alone. Her bedside is a busy place- with coworkers and students and friends and nieces, nephews, brothers and sisters surrounding her and enveloping her in love.
My heart is breaking with the thought of losing her. I don’t want her to leave me, and I know that’s terribly selfish of me, knowing where she’s headed and all.
But while my heart is so heavy with sadness, my aunt has healed that secret pain. That secret wondering.
I will have a legacy, even if it doesn’t look the way I hoped. I will be surrounded by love when the time comes for me to breathe my last.
Before I left, she gave me a ring- with a symbol on it that she said means “hope.”
Its fitting. Because of all the things she’s given me over the years, hope is the one I will cling most tightly to- hope that one day my prayers will be answered with a child of my own, and hope that even if they aren’t answered the way I’d like, my life will still have value.
“Sing, O barren one, who did not bear; break forth into singing and cry aloud, you who have not been in labor!
For the children of the desolate one will be more than the children of her who is married,” says the LORD.
“Enlarge the place of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out;
do not hold back; lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes. For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left, and your offspring will possess the nations and will people the desolate cities.” – Isaiah 54: 1-4
If you’re looking for more encouragement during infertility, be sure to check out my book, 31 Days of Prayer During Infertility.
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