Lo siento

The Spanish phrase for I'm sorry is Lo siento. Literally translated, lo siento means I feel it. I think about that phrase a lot. In English, it seems as if we say I'm sorry with quite a few different meanings. Sometimes, I've just given a quick sorry. I've said it after making mistakes and as a form of sympathy. But these meanings never produced the same emotional apology within me.

Today, I think lo siento is more appropriate. Laurie's little Toot was born into heaven on June 2. I left a comment for her and told her that I was sorry and that my heart breaks for her. My words betrayed me. I feel so much more. I feel confusion. Why Toot? Why not Lily? I feel punched. I know what I would want to do--just lie down in bed, balled up, not willing to do anything. Numb. I know how a part of me would be missing, just like she described. I feel the days and weeks and months of grieving and the grey that clouds a heart. I feel the deep sighs and the chokes and the how am I going to get over this saddness. I feel her loss.

Though I've not lost a child, I imagined it so many times before Lily was born. I have felt it threaten each time Lily has had an apnea spell. Like I said, it is so much more appropriate, this time, to say to Laurie, "Lo siento."