A Place to Visit Zachary

It has takem me nearly five years of pondering to decide Zachary needed a grave marker next to ours. Without a grave marker, the future generations would have no way of knowing that he existed unless they were tracing the family tree and found his death certificate.

With his ashes at home in his room where I feel they belong, it left people without a place to visit him without visiting us in our home. Now, anyone can visit with him at any time they wish.

His urn will remain in his room to comfort me, but when I am gone his urn can be buried below mine. It is my understanding that scattering ashes is illegal; hypothetically speaking there could be some ashes that were sprinkled by his grave marker.

Before the flowers

Halloween flowers

 

Markers for three

Graceland Cemetery West
4814 White Horse Road
Greenville SC 29611

 

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A Full-Time Job

Grieving a child is a full-time job. You learn to work the rest of life into the schedule. However, it is very tricky. This full-time job does not give you a schedule, you are perpetually on-call. You never know when the tears will come or how long the sadness will last. You never lose the drive to keep saying your child’s name and keeping their memory alive. You never stopping thinking about what could have and should have been. This job is all consuming, and completely exhausting.

Today, Zachary should be celebrating his 26th birthday. Would he have been married by now, a father, the owner of his own tattoo shop?? Would he have been living close by or have moved miles from home? Would he have been happy or struggling through life?

In the full-time job of grieving a child, we must accept so many unanswered questions.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop the heart from asking them.

It doesn’t stop the heart from wishing things had been different.

We must accept that there is no retirement plan for this position.

Only a countdown of breaths until we are reunited with the child that went before us.

 

Collection of Memories

I suppose some would call it a shrine, I prefer to call it a collection of memories. I don’t remember exactly who or where each item came from; I only know that people brought things. More in the beginning than lately. I am grateful for each and every item. Each one is a great representation of pieces of you.

And the overall picture is a great representation of the summary of you.

I hate that there is a summary of you; a beginning and an end. There should not be an end. I don’t have a profound sense of anything knowing that I saw a life from beginning to end. Maybe it should be deeply meaningful to me; the stuff great poetry is written about but it is only sad and senseless to me. I was not supposed to know the end of your story; you were supposed to be here for the end of mine.

Gone, Never Forgotten