May 2nd

To continue reading Joe's hospitalization story click here. I hope it's getting read, but I am liking posting memories of Joe this week. It's kind of strange to me that so many of you never knew Joe. I feel like everyone knew Joe. That's the kind of personality he had. Everyone knew him.

Pregnant with Joshua
(I looked through the archives to see if I had posted this story before. I felt like I had, but I couldn't find it. I apologize if you have read it before.)

When Jacob was four months old, we conceived Joshua. It was not a planned pregnancy by any stretch of the imagination. We were planning on spacing our kids a couple of years apart. We were watching a Red Sox game on our porch, Jacob was napping in his room, it was a commercial break, Joe and I looked at each other, decided to seize the moment, ran upstairs, and were back down for the bottom of the inning.

I was still nursing exclusively, and had not yet gotten my period (sorry Brett, Patrick, and Owen. I think you're the only guys that read this...) The likelihood of me getting pregnant seemed slim, and we did nothing to protect against it. But we both knew we were taking a risk that afternoon.

About a month later I was taking a walk with my neighbor, Chris, and our boys. I mentioned to her that I hadn't been feeling great, that I had been a little nauseous, and was throwing up a few times a day. "It feels almost like I'm pregnant," I said.

Chris looked at me wide eyed and insisted that I buy a pregnancy test from Walgreens. I told her I was sure that I wasn't pregnant, but I would buy one just too be positive.

We got to my house and Chris waited outside with the boys while I ran upstairs to the bathroom. You know how some tests take a few minutes to get the two lines? Well this one turned immediately. Two dark lines staring at me in the face.

I ran downstairs and showed Chris but was convinced that the test was faulty. I drank 3 quick glasses of water and ran upstairs to take test number two. Two more immediate dark lines.

I was undeniably pregnant.

I called Mel on the phone and told her to come over immediately. She thought something was wrong with Jacob and rushed over. She found me sitting in the corner of my living room, two positive tests sitting on the couch. She tried not to laugh at my misfortune but had great difficulty because I had been giving her a very hard time for purposely getting pregnant with #2 when #1 was only 6 months. And here I had beaten her crazy record by 2 months.

At this point I was having a bit of a breakdown. Me, having a breakdown? Impossible! My biggest concern was telling Joe. How in the world was I going to tell him that I was pregnant again? I was sure he would turn around, get in his car, go to a bar and get drunk. I knew that it took the two of us to get in the mess we were in, but I expected him to blame me.

Melanie took off before Joe got home, and I began pacing the house. I was trying every technique I knew of to calm myself down, but nothing was working.

Joe's car pulled in the driveway and I sat at the dining room table, tetst held tightly in my hand,

Joe took one look at me and knew something was wrong.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"Something really terrible happened," I answered.

"Are you pregnant?" he guessed. (I still don't know how he guessed it so quickly.)

"Yes."

"That's not terrible," Joe responded.

"It's not?"

"No! It's great, actually."

"It's great?"

"Yes. It's great. Who knows, b, maybe in two years you wouldn't be able to get pregnant. Maybe I wouldn't be able to get you pregnant. You never know what will happen in the future."

Neither of us could possibly imaging how true his words were. Neither of us could have possibly predicted that Joe wouldn't be alive that summer when Joshua was born. But whenever someone asks me if Joshua was planned or an accident (and believe me, people ask that all the time!) I say that he was a planned accident. Joe and I may not have planned him, but something bigger than us did. (I'm not getting all religious on you, but I do believe in fate.)

Joe was thrilled to be having a second son, and never once called him an accident. He was proud of his super sperm that beat the odds at getting me pregnant at a time when we didn't think it was at all likely. He told all of his friends that we were expecting again, and never once showed any doubt that it was a good idea.

Joe was a great dad. One of the saddest things about him dying four years ago was that he never got to meet his second son.

-b