I don’t like going to the cemetery. It’s a cold place for me that symbolizes brutal finality. It’s the place where I left a piece of my heart.
I have only visited there a couple of times by myself. If I go it’s with Travis and our kids.
But last Saturday I ran a couple of errands in the area where our third son is buried. I found myself a couple of blocks away and couldn’t in good conscience drive by without paying him a visit.
As I parked the car and got out I was struck by the anger that consumed me.
Part of me wanted to sit and sob, part wanted to chuck icy snowballs at a nearby tree.
I crouched down and looked at the faded decorations we left there a month earlier for Christmas. The tissue in the paper nativity we made was colorless. The edges of the mini stocking we have brought for several years in a row had lightened from red to pink.
Sun beat down on the scene.
Snow had begun to thaw in the cemetery’s baby land section. Yellow and brown grass was exposed around our little Luca’s headstone.
The cold was melting, yet my heart felt frozen; engulfed in sorrow.
How could my beautiful baby boy be buried beneath there? How could something so perfect be forced to lay rest beneath that soil? How did I let him go?
I still can’t completely fathom it. Most of the time my mind protects itself by not dwelling on the details.
I rarely stop and think about the day he stopped moving in my womb. I block out the horror and pain – both physical and emotional – that shrouded his birth.
It was the ultimate bittersweet ordeal. I got to say hello to my 5 pound 13 ounce chubby cheeked angel. But then had to say an immediate goodbye.
A light breeze rustled through the trees as I sat melancholy at the cemetery last weekend. It tickled the wind chimes that hang from the neighboring tree and they jingled through the silence.
Thoughts of my sweet boy and the short time we spent with him flooded my mind as I got back in my car and drove away.
It’s been more than five years since his death and I find myself still cycling through the stages of grief. Most of the time I’ll be doing just fine. Then suddenly out of nowhere I’ll find myself mad at the world and all of its injustices.
Maybe I should have thrown some snowballs that day in the cemetery. It wouldn’t have changed anything but it probably would have felt amazing.
Boogers on the Wall 