This showed up right before we went on vacation and we still haven’t quite decided how to go about it.
In case you’re wondering, “this” is the stone angel. Wasn’t there the next-to-last time Christina went to the gravesite, was right there in the middle of things the next time she showed up.
First of all, if the person who placed it reads this blog, we want to say thank you for the gesture. Given that one of my biggest fears will be that Colin will be forgotten, it heartens me whenever I see that someone has been to the grave and left flowers or just spent some time with him. On the other hand, we’re not sure what to do with the angel. It’s not us. It certainly doesn’t feel like Colin. So, we certainly appreciate the act of leaving the angel for him, we don’t think we want the angel there. Colin was sweet and fun and a handful, but he wasn’t an angel. He’d want a bust of Superman or a Ninjago character or Lightning McQueen or Curious George. I can only imagine his reaction to an angel.
But this isn’t supposed to turn into a public service announcement of what people should leave at the grave and how. Heaven knows, adding decorations to the site is preferable to subtraction: We still wonder what happened to the glass bauble that disappeared a few months ago. I think, in all fairness, if something gets left there and it doesn’t 100% agree with us, we might just move it to the side. We don’t aim to hurt anyone’s feelings, just sometimes we put our feelings first when it comes to Colin.
No, I’m writing because the act of an unknown party leaving something for Colin really got me thinking again about the places where we remember him. I still remain unmotivated to go to the cemetery, to be honest, so it’s almost hypocritical of me to care whether there’s a stone angel there or not. Christina tries to go once a week, but it’s not for me to write how she feels about the place.
What did strike me is that we were at the hospice at the weekend for an event and, as I always do, I took a moment to visit his stone at the pond. It looked strange this time, because they’ve covered the pond with netting to keep off leaves. From a distance it looked as if it had been filled in. But, upon closer inspection, everything is as it should be. Indeed, some gardener came through and fought back a big-leafed plant that had been threatening to cover the stone entirely.
I went twice. Once by myself while Christina was still parking the car and once with Christina. I think, mostly, I was astounded by how little out of the ordinary I felt at the site. When I was on my own, I even made a point of moving from bridge near his rock to the benches where we would sit with him to see if that would spark a feeling. But there was nothing special about the place for me, which struck me as strange. Which is not to say that I don’t miss my son, I just didn’t have that spike in emotions I’ve come to associate with the place. The first time I left after just a few minutes because it seemed like I should get back to the group. The second time we were called away within moments of arriving at the rock by the housekeeper, who wanted to say hi and bemoan to us the fact that she’s being kicked out of her apartment in a few days. That news prompted a bigger emotional reaction out of me than the act of visiting the stone.
Is this what time does to the mourning process? All the emotions are still there – I heard a podcast about a woman with terminal cancer today and all the emotions welled up just like they always do – but I find it’s become more of a numbness in the background. Even when it does perk up and hit me between the eyes, the sting only stays for a few minutes, not taking me to the depths like it used to.
I suppose, looking at it positively, he’s become more of an everyday presence, someone I think about multiple times a day. Looking at it negatively, I feel like it’s disrespecting him to lose my grief. And I can’t even say “Well, that’s what he would have wanted,” because he was too young to understand the concepts of death, grief and loss. He just showed up and burned out before the world could get its hooks into him, which is also sort of a reason to be happy sometimes.
So, maybe I’m moving beyond the markers – which feels really stupid, given the time and money we invested into finding a plot and a headstone – or maybe it’s just an evolving journey and, in a few months, I’ll be telling you a completely different story. He deserves to be remembered: That’s what I do know. A gravesite is a good way to do it. And everyone deserves a chance to go there and remember him in their own way. And, as his parents, we reserve the right to take charge of the site every now and then. But that said, thank you to whoever thought of him. It is appreciated.