House Special Coffee Ice Cream

A friend has reminded me that when St. Faustina received Christ's visits, her spiritual director, in order to test whether the visions wre truly coming from Christ or from His enemy, advised her to ask the apparition what she had said in her last confession. The vision replied, "I do not know. I have forgotten," which convinced the priest that the Visitor was in fact Our Lord, for God told Jeremiah that He would forgive his people's sins "and remember them no more" (Jer 31:31-34).

Still: I'm about to have a D&C for a missed miscarriage, my second pregnancy loss in four months and the second that will require an invasive procedure. I'm supposed to be 12 weeks pregnant but the baby died at 8 weeks. Seventeen years ago I was 8 weeks pregnant when I had my first pregnancy loss, a self-chosen abortion. My mind has been flooded uncannily with minutely-detailed memories of that time, down to what I wore, the shade of my lipstick, the menu that my then-boyhfriend good-humoredly and ruefullly drew up for the "last meal" the night before, with a menu card promising "House Special Coffee Ice Cream." (That good man [for he was good in many ways, in spite of this horrible mistake, which I'm sure he regrets] is long gone. We married and I did most things imaginable to ruin it.)

I must remember, then, that this is not punishment for those sins of long ago, for God has forgotten them, even if I have not. Then how am I to understand it?