When the news came in, she was sitting with her mother at a diner somewhere in south Texas, a lonely lunch on the way to the Methodist Home in San Antonio. They'd both cried too many tears that day, and knew more would be shed that night when her mother left her and her swollen, unspoken-of belly at the Home.
Too many tears. But now this. A crackling news report, and suddenly the loss the two privately shared was subsumed by strangers around them, gasping and crying for the loss of a president. No, nothing would ever be the same, for any of us.
Exactly two months later I was born. When she gave me up, she dressed me in a lovely yellow crocheted outfit that she had picked out, and packed for this occasion of her loss, a farewell gift.