This was me last year on President’s Day.

I look at this photo and I wish I could properly express what it does to me to see this shot.  I can’t believe it’s me.  I can’t believe that my belly once stretched that far to make room for James and Jake.  I envy the hand that rests on my belly in that shot.

I loved my baby belly.  It was cute, wasn’t it?  I don’t know if I’ve ever loved my baby belly so much as I did with James and Jake.  I was in great physical shape when I became pregnant with the twins.  In my previous pregnancies I was so unaware (read: stupid) of my weight and my health and I took for granted the importance of taking care of my body.  With the twins I understood.  I valued that I was mostly belly and turned down the extra helpings “just because I was eating for three.”  (most of the time.)

When I see this photo, I can literally  feel myself contracting, thinking about the tightness of my belly in this picture.  Does that make sense?  My heart drops knowing that the me in that shot has no idea what is about to happen in just a week’s time.  I’m so sad for her, I’m so sad knowing that at some point in that week’s time, their hearts stopped and I wasn’t there to comfort them through their deaths.  I was completely unaware of their stillness.  As a Mom, I feel like a failure.

I hate that February 26th, 2009, is almost here.  I don’t know how to handle this time of year.  The memories of their delivery and holding them in our arms and saying good-bye, their memorial service, learning to live our new life with grief, it’s all so hard.

No.  It’s unbearable.

In a way,  I’m so glad that the first year of grief is almost over and although I know my grief will never be gone, I can appreciate all that we’ve been through, all that we’ve conquered and all that we’ve learned and be glad that it’s our history and not our present.  But with the first year being almost over, I feel even more distance from our angel boys and that’s really difficult for this Mom’s heart to take.