A Piece of My Heart is Buried Under the Oak Tree

Every year, it's the same. It’s not a conscious thought at first, but a quiet pull in my soul as the calendar prepares to flip. As the last days of February give way to the promise of March, I find myself looking out the window a little more often, my gaze lingering on the oak tree in our front yard.

It’s an anniversary my heart keeps, even when my mind tries to stay busy. It’s the anniversary of a loss. The anniversary of a hope.

The news itself wasn’t a surprise, not really. The numbers had been decreasing with each blood draw. My head understood the clinical reality; my logical brain knew what was coming.

But knowing a storm is on the horizon and standing in its full, terrifying force are two vastly different things.

I remember it was a hot, late August day when it happened. The emotional pain of watching my husband scoop up what would have been our longed-for, much-loved child from the bathroom floor is a memory etched into my soul. With a tenderness that I will love him for until my last day, he held in his hands all the hopes, all the dreams, and all the despair of our hearts.

In the blur of the days that followed, a piece of our hearts found its resting place under that oak tree. A sacred spot known only to us. A quiet marker for a life that was so fiercely wanted.

Years have passed since that day. The sharp, jagged edges of that initial pain have been worn down by time, as edges often are. It doesn't cut me with the same shocking intensity anymore.

But the ache remains.

The ache in my heart still comes in waves, silent and unexpected. It happens when I look out the window at our tree. Sometimes I cry on the inside, a quiet tightening in my chest that no one else can see. And sometimes, my hurt is visible, the tears falling freely for the baby I never got to meet.

The ache is sharpest in the "what-ifs." Every February, as I prepare to flip the calendar to March, I find myself wondering. Who would they have been? Would they have had my husband's laugh? My stubborn streak? It's the marking of another birthday I’ll never know, another milestone that exists only in my heart.

This is a quiet grief. There are no public memorials for the lives that only we knew. There are no rituals for the anniversaries that only we remember. Society doesn't always know what to do with a sadness that is for someone who was loved so completely, but never held.

So, friend, if you are reading this and you have your own version of an oak tree—a quiet place where you’ve buried a piece of your own heart—please know we see you. We see you in the moments the world doesn't, when a passing memory brings a wave of that familiar ache. We honor the love you still carry, a love that has nowhere to go, so you carry it inside you, every single day.

The ache is real because the love was—and is—real. And that is a story worth remembering.