The Message

“We never understand how little we need in this world until we know the loss of it.”
-James M. Barrie

Some weeks ago Spouse was on a business trip and he telephoned home to access his voice messages.
He listened to a message from his sibling: the announcement was "I'm at the hospital. It's a boy."
Spouse was a little perplexed, having absolutely no recollection of being told the couple was expecting a second child, the first having been born less than two years ago.
Spouse was solemnly regretful that he had managed to miss the usual enthusiasm and anticipation that heralds the arrival of a child.
We both recovered from that element, however, as one does where children are concerned, and adjusted to the prospect of another nephew, another life in the world. I informed Mater and she was enormously pleased for people she had not ever met, in a part of the world she had not ventured to.
Spouse returned from his travels and promptly called his sibling. Alarm bells began to ring ominously when minutes passed and no mention at all was made of the child.
Conversation proceeded as normal but Spouse was concerned, confused and overwhelmed, and increasingly reluctant to instigate the topic. There seemed no reason for the subject of the baby to be omitted from general discussion.
At last, when the call concluded, Spouse went with trepidation to listen to the message again, wondering, worried, if he had missed something essential or perhaps even entirely dreamed the greeting.
No, it had not been a dream. It turned out, however, that in haste Spouse had listened to the wrong archive of messages: that declaration he heard was in fact nearly two years old.
It told Spouse of the birth of his sibling's first- and therefore only- child. There was no new baby boy, merely a recital of a message regarding the existing one.
What most struck Spouse and I, what halted us in our tracks, was the useless void left behind when the discovery had been made.
To listen to us talk, one would have suspected we had in fact long prepared for the new nephew, and not at all that it had really astonished us to hear of another baby in the family. Despite the relative speed with which the whole thing took place, we found ourselves feeling a little bit vacant when it was all over.
We had spent those fine few days thinking of a new child: whether he was hearty and healthy; who he would resemble; what great person he might be one day; and, rather whimsically, whether he might come to visit Spouse and I.
There was no new child, except in our minds- and temporarily at that- but when the misunderstanding was revealed and the sentiment pulled like a great rug from under us, it seemed to be a deep and significant loss that we could not fathom. It felt for all the world as though a nephew had been taken away, so strong were the sentiments we had of that new person.
Once imagined, we could not so easily dismiss our thoughts as a mere figment of error.
Ideas can be immeasurably potent, particularly when one gives those notions a face, a family and a future.