The Last Love Note

by Emma Grey

I’m already crying when I brave the investigation that proves within seconds that all is lost. Huge, heaving sobs come from a place within me that I didn’t even know existed. So much grief, I can’t stand it. I can’t do this. It’s impossible to be alive and feel this wounded, and now the bargaining is all about me. End this. I can’t be here. This is beyond me.

‘Losing’ is such a stupid word for what happens when someone dies,” I tell Hugh. “I haven’t misplaced my baby. Didn’t leave it lying around somewhere, or on the bus or in the trolley at the supermarket. I’m not absentmindedly going to lose my husband.…”

Did this little soul take one look at the carnage it was entering into and beat a retreat? And then I succumb to a desperate grief I wish wasn’t so familiar.