Marker in place

On Thursday, October 18, Ed's grave marker from the Veterans Administration was installed. The cemetery called me Friday at noon to tell me, and I immediately went to the cemetery to see it. I had been dreading this day but upon seeing it, instead of feeling dread and becoming hysterical as I thought might happen, I felt a sense of peace and calmness. I shed only a few tears at the sight. It was just as I had ordered it, simple and dignified, showing his name, rank and branch of service, birth and death dates, and a cross. It's a dark brown bronze with a simple raised design around the edges lightly brushed with a dark gold coloring, the same coloring that is used for the raised lettering. The marker sits on a light gray granite slab that is more than double the width of the marker, which sits on the left side of the granite. In the center of the granite is a dark bronze flower holder, which also has a cross on it. It just so happened that there were two red roses blooming on our garden rose bush that has hardly produced anything all summer following the harsh spring we had, and I clipped them before I left and put them in the flower holder. The right side of the granite has nothing on it, at my request. Normally, people buy both plaques at the same time when they buy two cemetery lots and have all the information put on the survivor's plaque as well, leaving only the date of death to be added; I chose not to do that. At the time I was ordering the marker, I recognized that it could be many years until my death (after all my father lived to be 80, my mother is 82, and I have aunts who lived into their 90s), and who knows what or where I'll be then. So I told the kids that if something happens to me within the next few years, my burial place is set; but if, God forbid, something happens to one of them and their family wants it, the space can be available to them.

I first left for the cemetery immediately after getting the phone call, literally grabbed my purse and jumped into the car and took off. I got about a half mile from the house when I remembered that there would be a flower holder to fill, so I turned around and came back--not as quickly as getting that far because I had to wait for a train to pass. That gave me time to get my head straight. I thought about asking someone to go with me, about taking a small flag and how to secure it in the holder. But when I pulled back into the driveway, those two red roses caught my eye. Then as I scurried around getting the roses cut and into stem holders and gathered some options for keeping them secured in the bronze holder since it has been so windy, I decided that this was something I wanted to do alone. Wednesday evening at the support group (another set of weekly sessions is in progress, this time right up until Christmas), the guy who bought my car told the group that his wife's headstone had been installed that day and he was ecstatic when he saw it. I didn't understand how he could feel ecstatic, but I thought maybe by going alone to the cemetery, I could just let myself feel whatever feeling came over me. As I said, I felt peaceful. Then, typical of me I suppose, I started to clean off the plaque because it had some dust spots on it. As windy as it was, it may be that the rose petals were blown off before the day was over, but I'm glad the first roses in the holder were from our garden.

I've been having a rough week emotion-wise, actually since Thursday of last week. My support group reminded me that the ups and downs of grieving can go on for a long time and it's only been 4 months, that this is one of those down times. One other thing that happened during the group session was more of a revelation to me. A new participant sitting next to me talked about how she was trying to find her identity after being caretaker and best friend to her 29-year-old daughter, who died after a long illness. That word "identity" jolted me. That is the subject of the SAT essays I'm working on. I started back to grading essays Thursday of last week. Frequently I've been bursting into tears in the middle of reading an essay but haven't found any particular idea I'm reading to be a trigger. After her comment it hit me--I can't believe I didn't realize this sooner--that, like anyone else who lost a spouse or someone close to them, I am re-defining my identity as I have to take care of things that Ed used to do and as I think about what my future holds. The future is not something I face easily. As the group re-convened after a break, another member wanted to continue to talk about re-defining yourself. After a few comments, I told the group about my revelation, that these identity essays must be getting to my subconscious mind, reminding me that I have a lot to figure out for myself. The two facilitators were nodding their heads so vigorously that they looked like bobble-head dolls. That must have been some kind of breakthrough for me because on Thursday of this week when I sat down to work on essays, I didn't cry but for one moment, and I didn't cry at all on Friday as I worked on them.

You might notice what time it is that I am writing this. I've been up since 3:30 a.m. with thoughts of Ed jumbling up in my mind. Usually I just talk out loud to him to get myself "unjumbled." This time I thought if I wrote this blog, maybe I could get back to sleep more easily. By the way, in my last blog I couldn't remember what Melissa's old car was. It just came to me, a 1999 Grand Prix. What turns the mind takes!