I don’t think I have a link to Devin’s site from this blog, as it’s pretty much all the same info as I have posted here (I actually have more here – the other site was/is for my family). But I just added another page there: videos of me pregnant.

I have only one video of me walking and talking and being pregnant, and I was around 32 weeks at the time. But I also have two videos of my belly moving – of Devin moving. It took me over a month to be able to view and edit them, and I just now put them on a site for others to see. For me it is so bittersweet… I am SO HAPPY that I have them. Watching them reminds me of how wonderful it really was, reminds me that he existed. Reminds me of the good times we had.

But it also reminds me that he’s gone. I can’t help but cry when I watch. How could this have gotten taken away from us? It doesn’t seem possible. Two and a half months later and it still feels like some kind of horrible nightmare that I just haven’t woken up from. I feel like a shell, walking and talking and doing all the right things to get me through each day, pouring my soul into my gardens with a grim determination to try to find some sort of meaning to my life again. To find something work getting up for in the morning.

Better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all? I don’t know, I don’t know. Some days I’d do anything to remove this cloud from my heart… to make it stop hurting. But I never want to forget him. The grieving parent’s catch-22. There is no answer. But then again, there are no options either. It doesn’t matter what I want at any given moment, any given day. How I feel doesn’t seem to be affected by what I want. It happens regardless.

And that’s one of the many realizations, then kicks in the pants through this process, this change. All those self-help books that say you can make your life whatever you want it, you can acheive whatever you want to if only you try hard enough, if only you want it enough. But bereaved parents know better. Sometimes what you do or think or say means jack shit. You are the ant, life is a gavel. You can say all the positive mantras you want, you can love dearly and honestly, you can truly believe. You go squish anyways.

::

Today was SIL’s due date. Baby still hasn’t come yet. I am attempting to mentally and emotionally prepare myself – at least, as much as is possible. Part of me thinks it’ll depend on the hour and the day. Somedays I’m close to tears anyways; somedays I feel pretty positive. But the other part of me thinks it really doesn’t matter what kind of day it is, I’m going to have a break down anyways. It’s so… well, “hard” doesn’t really seem to appropriately describe it. Conflicting. My own grief anger at the world mixed with anticipation and honest well-wishes for my SIL.

Most of all I want to get this over with. Grief sucks, we all know that. Situations like this is like waiting for the salt, knowing it’s going to hurt. I want to run away from it and put it off as long as possible – I know just two weeks ago the thought of her going into labor early made me extremely panicked, like I wasn’t ready. And I’m still not ready, but I know the time is here. I want to work through it, deal with it, and move on with my life. I feel like I can’t move on until I’ve slogged my way through this. It might be easier than I expect, or it might be ten times harder – but the waiting sucks either way. I am scared. I am scared that it’s going to bring it all up again, watching and thinking about it. I am scared that it’s going to hurt as much as it’s ever hurt, and I just don’t want to feel that again. I am scared that I won’t be able to handle it, that it will somehow screw up my friendship with SIL. I am scared of this unknown future.

I really look forward to being at a point where I can look back on this time of my life, remembering how much it sucked but with a little perspective, a little separation from it.