What's in a Grave?

(originally written 4/21/14)    

        I've never understood the gravesite part of death. Who chooses a plot in a random lot to be buried with strangers and why? In my healthcare directive I have written up what to do with my remains- I'm to be cremated and taken somewhere my family would like to visit. Scatter me in the lake, sprinkle me in the woods, plant me under a new tree to fertilize a tradition. I've wanted to be where my family is or at least somewhere they would like to come to visit me.
       Despite this "wanting to be visited" part of my wishes, I've not really been one for cemeteries and gravestones. It seems antiquated and sad and very distant in my life where I've moved from city to city more than twice in the last eight years alone.
       When my son died we needed to make decisions about his little body. There is no emergency fund labeled for just such an occasion as 'Death of Our Child,' so financially there was little room for a plot of earth in a gated community of corpses. It was a simple and quick decision to have him cremated, for one of the main reasons that we were not sure where we would bury him anyway...where we live now is not a forever home and our hometown, though possibly perfect, is so far from us. Cremation was also inexpensive, with one of the local funeral homes offering to provide that service for free, including his little urn.
       When we brought him home for the first time we had to think of a little space to place him, one that wasn't going to be disturbed by his sisters but one that put him front and center in our daily lives. He resides on a shelf in the living room now, space shared with a photo of each of his sisters at about a year old. It's a lovely location to look in on him.

       I realized though, not too long after he found his perch, that there is no privacy there. There is no safe space, no sacred sanctuary for me, or any member of our family to speak to Griffin alone. It came to me in that moment, the allure of the grave, for this purpose specifically. Perhaps for other parents, there is a nursery that can be left alone, like a shrine, devoted solely for a length of time to that invisible person. In that room it would be appropriate to close the door and have the peace and quiet that I'd imagine one could find in the cemetery visiting the dead. In our home though, no such room existed. This baby was to be welcomed into the family bed, sharing his room with us as parents to a newborn, a bassinet beside me in the night as we had done for his three sisters before him. There is no personal touch for him there now, and with no nursery to retreat to, for a reprieve to share my thoughts with him, I did struggle.
       I missed the grave in that moment. I missed that ceremony that comes with visiting him, walking through the seasons of that fenced locale, a designated berth for the Grief that cannot be kept in my living room. We most likely will not bury him, at least not in the foreseeable future, but maybe someday if we settle permanently, he might be given a spot, a little shady glen where we can sit and remember when our family was whole. 

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