Today I actually managed to get dressed and run errands during the day. I don’t know why it’s been so hard to convince myself to actually go do stuff, but the days just keep melding together and I think to myself, “Oh I’ll just do this tomorrow…” And I guess a large part of me simply doesn’t care.

Well, one stop on my list of errands was causing me some anxiety, but I knew that was why I was putting it off: I had to stop and pick up our taxes from the tax guy. When we sat down with him and went over everything and handed over all our tax information I was quite pregnant. So since Devin’s birth I’ve just been putting off calling him to finalize the taxes because damnit… I just didn’t want to have to deal with it. But finally I was left with little choice, and I am far better prepared to deal with these things now than I was two weeks ago. So I went. I sat there with my heart thumping, nerves taut, just waiting to see if he was going to remark on my state of un-pregnantness in a jaunty manner. Thankfully it appears he either didn’t remember I was pregnant or just didn’t bring it up. It took a while for the nerves to settle though.

He did unknowingly bring up an interesting issue for me, though: the casual greeting. I said the other day that my response to the, “How are you doing?” question is usually, “It comes and goes.” And it is. But that’s only really fair when the person asking knows our situation and wants to know how we’re holding up. But what about the unknowing stranger who asks how I’m doing? The cashier, the banker, the hairdresser… people who you may see now and then, but you don’t have an ongoing relationship with… who honestly probably don’t want to hear your lifes tragedy. The tax guy, he cheerily asked, “So how goes it?” …. Well heck, what the hell do I answer to that? As I’ve said before, any variant of “great” or “good” seem so dishonest, even if they are the expected, polite answer. But do you really want to say something like, “It sucks, really,” and open that door? Do you really want that stranger to ask why things aren’t going so well? I feel sorry for people when they unsuspectingly place themselves square in the middle of that mess… because I really really don’t think anyone expects to hear, “Well, my son died a few weeks ago,” and then deal with me sobbing. That would be a rather awkward moment. So I settled for a brief, “Eh, it goes okay.” Honest enough without inviting more questions. It works for now.

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Getting out of the house was not without other little challenges, as well.

I went to work for a meeting today, and it was weird being there again – first time since Devin died. It was a slightly uneasy feeling…. I thought about how the last time I was there Devin was with me. It was hard not to remember all the times I walked around with my big belly, laughing because stairs were getting harder for me. I had to take a breath and re-focus on the here and now.

Driving my car, I was thinking about how much I like my car… and then I thougt about how I chose a nice little sedan with lots of room in the back seat for a car seat. A nice family car. How excited I was, how proud.

Everything has memories. Even when I went to the grocery store last week to buy some things I kept thinking about all the times I walked the aisles pregnant, hand on my belly.

I can understand why people feel the need to start fresh… to escape all those memories. But as I thought about it driving home, I realized that – as hard as it is to face all those little reminders in every aspect of life – it’s part of the healing process. You have to hurt to heal.

It’s really quite stunning to me that medical professionals didn’t figure this out until recently. I read so much about how even just a few years ago women were not encouraged to spend time with their baby after a stillbirth…. how the baby was removed as quickly as possible, the reason given was that it would be easier for the mother to get over it…. to just move on with her life. But how on earth are you supposed to move on without closure?? I am not surprized that many of those women feel the same grief 10 years later as they did that first month… they never dealt with it.

I’m glad I gave myself time at home before venturing out, though. I do see a difference between avoiding grieving and delaying it. There have been times in the past few weeks when a thought or action was so emotionally painful to me I shelved it for later. It’s not that I thought it would just magically go away – I knew that there would be a time when I would have to take it down and deal with it, and that it was going to be painful. But I also recognized that sometimes you need a little strength first. There is such a thing as being overwhelmed with emotion and that isn’t helpful either. So I waited a week or two before facing it, and was much better able to handle it. It’s important not to keep putting it off, though. There’s never going to be a “good time.”

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Speaking of fears… the one overwhelming fear lurking in the closet is that Devin was the one. In that ultrasound room when I found out he was gone one of my first thoughts was that he was our miracle child…. he was our perfect child. It truly felt like everything in the universe aligned just right for him. And the fear, the debilitating fear, was that it would never happen again. We used up our insurance, maybe we used up all our luck too. What if Devin was the only chance we are going to get.

We refuse to think like that. We have lots of plans and backup plans. Den and I talk about names and reference “when we have a baby in the house.” And to tell the truth most of the time it’s not an act… we really do believe that this is not the end of the road. We certainly are not going to give up.

But damn that fear is there, lurking. And it scares me more than anything I know. Dealing with Devin’s death hurts so very, very much… but I can keep moving forward as long as I know that there is something more waiting around the bend, that there’s another chance out there for us.