Pansies

We planted pansies at Henry's grave yesterday. The water spigot near his stone was broken, so Brian walked the kids halfway across the cemetery to fill the watering can. Brian's voice faded slowly as he pointed out names we know and flags for veterans. Cars zoomed by on the road behind me. Our cemetery is right on the main road, and yet, when I'm there, I feel invisible.

The sun was warm and I just sat in front of Henry's stone before I started clearing dead leaves and digging a hole for the pansies. And I thought, not for the first time, "How is this my life?" I am still stymied sometimes by the fact that I have a child who died. I can't make sense of this stone with his name instead of the smiling face and warm body I once held.

Looking at the pansies, I remembered the basket of these white and yellow flower that appeared in this spot that first spring, when the ground was a scar of raw bare ground, much like our hearts. We didn't know for some time who left them, but I was comforted that somebody besides us came, that somebody remembered, that somebody cared enough to leave a patch of brightness for him, for us. I remember too how deflated I was when they disappeared, how the energy seeped right out of me even as Brian's anger burned brighter and harder. His anger frightened me. I remember but I'm here.

I'm here on this sunny day with the grass growing thickly where the ground was once bare. I'm here with a stone marking what was so long unmarked. I'm here with Brian and my girls moving back toward me, voices gaining as they moments before faded. I am here. Brian is here. My girls are here. And the pansies are here, so when I drive by there is brightness.

Henry's castle

Just down the street on the way to the playground is an old cemetery. We walk by it frequently and sometimes we stop, because Kathleen likes to visit the "castles." It is not a particularly ornate or ostentatious cemetery, but some of the monuments are tall and there are some family plots with steps and one with a decaying wrought iron gate.

While Kathleen climbs up and down the steps, I walk the rows, reading the aged stones:
11 months
10 months
8 days

I like that they make it easy for me. No math, no wondering if 1871–1871 lived a day or a year. I considered (though not seriously) writing 203 days on his stone or 6 months, 18 days. We didn't though.

 Our family name. His name with hearts on either side. His born and died dates. Son of Brian and Sara.

It's a rough, imperfect stone. I love the stone itself. I'm happy with the carving. I'm getting used to how it looks next to the more polished stones. I accept that it is not right over him (we were warned of that long ago when they first put him in the ground), though a little closer would have been nice. Still, he is marked. You can find him. We can plant things, place things for him. Henry's stone, his castle, was installed today.

I stopped today on our way to music class to see where they were placing him and what the stone looked like. "It looks good," I murmured. "Pretty soon it will be all set, in forever," the guy told me. Ah, yes, forever.

When I got back in the car, Kathleen was asking questions and wanting to see them work, and perhaps we could have stayed and watched the process, but. No. I couldn't. As I fielded her questions and focused on the road, hiccoughing sobs wracked through me. There it was, written in stone, the brief time he had with us. There is was, written in stone, my baby is gone. Not that I don't know, but there it was.

I met Brian there after work and we looked and commented on how it came out and I cried again in the gathering dark and the misty rain. I'm glad it's done. I will appreciate having it there when we visit. But, it's a grave stone for my baby, calling it his castle doesn't disguise that.

Unmarked

It's been nearly four years since we buried Henry. It was too late in the year to install a stone and too much to think about one anyway. He's squeezed in at the edge of a family plot, too close to the road, next to Brian's grandfather. It was important to me that he wasn't alone. We didn't have his name added to the family stone (the wording of the relationship seemed to cumbersome and confusing and besides be planned to get him his own stone).

Last November, we drove up to visit my parents and chose a stone, a rough piece of granite, from the yard of a family friend. Last week, my cousin drove it out to us. Now, we are waiting to find out if we are allowed to have a raised stone for him or if it will have to be a flat one. We need to find out if they can carve the stone. We are still fine tuning what we will say. (Last name above first and middle name? First name and middle initial? Months spelled out or in numerals? Is there room for our names, to say son of Brian and Sara?)

Everything about this process takes time. And energy. It is one of those things I want done, but how I struggle to actually takes the steps to do it. I will be relieved when it is done, when his name is there, when I have a place to put whatever it is I bring to the cemetery. Until it is done, I will become weary every time we try to make it happen. I will feel weary and guilty that it has been this long.

Headstones and hospital programs

Friday we drove up to visit my parents, but really to look at stones. We still, almost three years later, don't have a headstone for Henry. Making that decision was more than either of us could handle when Henry first died. Then grief was heavy, Brian was in nursing school, I was pregnant, we had a new baby, Brian was still in school . . . we didn't have the time to look or the energy to talk about what we wanted. Still it bothered me that he did not have a marker, and we finally started talking about it this year. We talked about getting a piece of granite from my hometown. I never got to bring him there, so we thought we'd bring a piece to him.

While my mom chased Kathleen around an very old cemetery, Brian and I poked through a pile of stones in the yard of a family friend. I wasn't sure we'd find anything. I kept telling Brian we could always get a stone from someplace else if we didn't find what we wanted. Then he found it. Not too big, not too small. A flat face for his name, curved on the back, not quite a perfect arch at the top. It looked natural, but workable—just what we wanted.

We still need somebody to carve and install the stone, but we are one step closer to having a marker on his grave. One step closer, maybe, to keeping people from driving over him. One step closer to anybody being able to find him.

***
Saturday we left Kathleen with my parents and drove into Boston for a program that Children's runs each November for grieving families.

The timing good for me. It feels right to go back in the fall, during the time that I lived there with him. It feels right to make space for him, for grieving, for talking about all of it, right before we head into the darkest days for me.

Strangely, it feels something like a reunion. We saw our chaplain and the woman I knew best from the family life center and the psychologist and a couple from our grief group and a mom who had helped me a lot while Henry was in the hospital and another mom who was in our small breakout group last year. There was that odd happy to see people feeling, despite our reason for being there.

It was an exhausting day, but a good one. I talked about the things that seem like the big issues right now for me: telling new people I meet about Henry and December. I cried the hardest talking about what I want for Kathleen and this new baby—fun birthdays, happy Christmases—and my fears that the weight of December won't let me give them that. These are the things I struggle with right now.

***
When we left our house on Friday, I thought of it as a grief weekend, thought it might be kind of depressing. It wasn't though: we found the stone; I talked to people have I haven't talked to in a long time; I talked about Henry. It was sad, exhausting, but not depressing.

The moment that sticks with me most clearly isn't sad at all. Friday evening we brought Kathleen over to see my grandmother. She was shy for about the first five minutes; then she was running around with her cousin like she owned the place. When it was time to go, I told her to go say goodbye to Big Nana. Kathleen ran right over to her and gave her a big hug and loud kiss, and my grandmother gave one of her famous neck-breaking hugs and sang "I love you a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck. You bet your big blue eyes I do!"

Going to look for the stone, the extra night with my family was a last minute plan, but when I think of this weekend, the first picture I see is Kathleen with her arms around my Nana and it makes me smile.

How it hits

Two years ago today a buried a baby, my son, my love, my Henry.
And yet this morning I got up with my baby girl, ate breakfast, laughed, played.
I wrote Christmas cards and packed up gifts. 
It was any other day.

At 9:15 I was out the door for Christmas shopping.
A stop at the post-office, a package dropped off at a friends house.
The first strip of stores, running through my list, waiting in lines,
Gathering the things I was looking for.

It was the bank that did me in.
I went to the drive through, sent my request up through a tube
I was starting to tire of my errands and was staring blankly across two lanes of cars,
There in the window. Today is December 22.

The 22 was so big. My baby was so small.
We had four pall bearers, which was perhaps overkill.
Two grandfathers, his godfather, and my uncle (who knows too what it is to bury a son)
And his grandmothers read the eulogy that I wrote.

Today is December 22.
My chest tightened and my arms and legs got both heavy and light:
almost too much to lift and yet feeling as if they might float right off my body.
This is how it happens for me. How it comes on.

I thought about heading right home.
Lying on the bed, wrapped in his blanket. Retreating yet again
But there are nieces and nephews who deserve something to open on Thursday night
So I pressed on, but my steps were heavier, my mind distracted.

I buried my baby today. Two short and endless years ago.
I was rushing on the way home.
I had been gone longer than I expected. There was traffic when I just wanted to get back.
And I drove right by the cemetery.

The cemetery where two years ago I buried my baby.
Drove right by, distracted by the falling down house that is finally being torn down.
I didn't stop, didn't look to see if the wreath I left on the 17th was still there.
Didn't even throw out an I love you, I miss you as I passed.

But I know he is there underneath the snow
Too close to the road, still unmarked with stone. He is there whether I look or not
And yet he is not really there at all, and he doesn't care if I stop or wave or leave trinkets.
But I wish I had stopped, just for a moment and left my handprint in the snow ever him.

Two years ago I buried my baby boy.
I know this, have known this, will always know this.
And yet still it hits me suddenly, unexpectedly, this reminder of what I cannot forget,
what I carry with me always. It hits me and leaves me drained.

The Cemetery

I stopped at the cemetery today on my way out of town. So many times I pass by without stopping, but always I like to visit before I leave town for a few days, and if I can, stop on my way back in.

On Sunday, I planted mums, dark red ones, in front of the family stone. Henry’s name is not on this stone because we want to get him a stone of his own. But I’ve found that plants left directly on his grave, whether in a basket or planted directly in the ground get stolen or dug up. 

It’s hard enough to go to the cemetery to visit my baby boy. I don’t need to find the little things I leave for him damaged or gone. It disheartens me every time. Brian gets enraged. I mostly just get weary and sad.

Today there was a huge chunk out of the front of the mum. Perhaps from a mower; perhaps from somebody plucking it off. I’ve never been sure if it was an act of malice or not caring. Either way it upsets me.

It bothered me for a long time as I sat in traffic at the beginning of my trip. I was on the verge of tears and trying to stay focused on the road. So I tried to let the frustration go, and I focused on this.

Henry was buried in December when the ground was hard and frozen. Soon his grave was covered with snow. Then the snow retreated and we could see the bare earth, his tiny grave. As the ground warmed, they prepared to reseed it. Brian and I would pick up little stones each time we visited, stones that would sit on a shelf or in our pockets, a token from Henry’s place. One of the last days before they seeded, we were at the cemetery and I just started making a heart for Henry out of the stones. Brian helped, and then together we pieced out his name. It was the only marker we had for his grave at that point.

We went away, knowing we wouldn’t see our marker again, for the seed was to be planted the next day. Weeks later I got an envelope in the mail, somebody in town, but I name I only recognized from a card when Henry died. Inside I found pictures of Henry’s stone heart.

Brian ran into the cemetery caretaker, who told him that he had hated to cover it up. But, he said, I put the first layer down carefully. It’s still there underneath.

So I hold on to this. If somebody chooses to steal flowers off my baby’s grave or the cemetery staff can’t be bothered to not cut down what I plant for him, one day somebody cared enough to preserve—in pictures and in reality—Henry’s stone heart. Flowers may go missing, but his name and his symbol are just a few inches down. Knowing they are there is a slight comfort; knowing somebody took the time for that kindness, much more of one.

I’m still upset, and will be, when I think of the flowers, but there is a slight redemption to hold onto.