the beginning of after

i am heading home for california tomorrow. i will be happy to get there and see my husband, who left for home on tuesday, and i'll be happy to see the furries again but it is bumming me out. it is making me so depressed and sad. it's the first step on the road to life going on without devin and it hurts.

all of my family were here except my sister-in-law, marie, who had to stay home in holland with her and patrick's little boy. otherwise we were all here... from pittsburgh, from san jose, from amsterdam. it was great and horrible to see everyone. seeing devin in the casket... i don't even have words to describe just how terrible that was. seeing and meeting his friends and all the people who loved him gather for two days and then pack the funeral to standing room only... i don't have words to describe how incredible that was.

if a funeral can be neat, devin's was. we couldn't do what his dad, my brother mick, and his brother, my nephew colin, said he'd really like - a viking funeral pyre - but we did our best. we had ziggy stardust and justin sane, friends singing aeroplane over the sea by neutral milk hotel and playing irish traditional music. we had grandpap singing danny boy, love and farewell messages written on an irish flag, memories shared and even devin's own words that showed his zest for life. we gave him as good a send off as we could and i believe we did him proud.

he died in a fall, in an accident. it wasn't hit and run, a drunk driver, nothing like that. a fall, an accident, a piece of horrible, terrible, dreadful luck, and that helps. it gives me comfort, truly. he wasn't left for dead. he wasn't left like a piece of trash. people did try to help him and even though it didn't make enough of a difference to save him they tried, and that's what matters. devin was an organ donor. right at this very moment someone has his heart. someone has his lung. someone has his kidney, and someone has his liver, someone has his corneas (i think, anyway), and that does NOT help. that he's helping others to live doesn't give me the slightest bit of comfort and i always thought that knowing your loved one helped others to live would be some sort of consolation, but i was wrong. i know it's right, but it doesn't help because it doesn't bring devin back and it doesn't give his death purpose or meaning. someone else gets to live for a while because devin and the rest of us were robbed and brutalized. it's not that i begrudge them and their loved ones, because i don't. it's just they aren't my loved ones. they aren't devin and they never will be and that is a very bitter pill, indeed.

i love you devin patrick geever. always have, always will, and i will always miss you.