My son in the cemetery

 

There's a really weird thing about kids and time. Even if you don't have kids, they have a way of reminding you "It's been 3 years? She's going to be 3?" And they have this constant reminder about mortality. Thanks Brock. You see, there's this thing called responsibility and all your stupid choices have to revolve around them. You can just blow all your money on scratch off tickets and sit your own pile of glorious scratch off dust. Who's addicted?


No, kids remind you that you're going to die. They remind you that other people have died. You hurry up and get them in pictures so that they can be in pictures with people before they die (even though they will never remember this) because you want them to be in said picture before that person dies.

Plus, will they take care of you? What will happen when you die? Will they die before you? OH MY GOD? See --- mortality.

Now I'm prefacing this like I am above all of this, which is a big ole load of crap. My 100 year old grandmother recently died and you better believe we have several pictures with all of us.

But something really touching happened yesterday and in a world where so much goes wrong, I just thought I'd tell you about this sweet little moment with my sweet little boy.

My mom had to stop by the cemetery where my grandmother was recently buried, I hadn't been there since she had been buried. I've been so many other times because it's the same spot where my brother Teddy was buried. At first I was planned to wait in the car. If you have a toddler you really hate to wrangle them in and wrangle them out. But then I remembered all of the beautiful butterflies flew around the cemetery and I knew he'd like that, so I pulled Brock out of the car and started to walk around.

It was the oddest sensation of my life. Watching my kid stand on graves that he would one day put me in and he would one day be in (unless, of course science has found the cure for life).  Brock just stood there and he just smiled. He ran about like little boys do, touching to vases and some of the nick knacks people lovingly left on graves - don't worry he didn't break anything. And then it dawned on me that I might as well show him where his family is buried.

It as a haul but I carried him (and a few bug bites-as big as butterflies the real ones must have migrated) and we found the spot where our family lay to rest. I introduced him to everyone. I told him who they were. I saved my brother for last.

Before I could start the introduction Brock fell to his knees at my brother's gravesite and started to feel the letters on his head stone. I instantly started to cry. He is not a still boy, but he sat there (for a second).  After then he got up and started collecting his favorite things leaves and rocks. He left a stick in the vase for my Aunt Barbara (not sure why the stick). But his favorite things that he kept walking around with were these soft light brown leaves. He carefully laid one on my brother's headstone.

Now, I was obviously a wreck and kids just do weird stuff. And, honestly I'm going though a difficult time right now in my life, so I'd like to think that there was something, even if he sensed how important my brother was to me. It was a good moment.

I'm not ashamed to say, I followed up our visit, tear stained face and all with the best southern comfort bbq there is - Bessengers.

Hebrews 6:19 and 2 Cor 12:9

You don't own anything

Recently, let me say, very recently we were the lucky parents of beautiful new blue weimaraner. We named him Coal. We were instantly in love.There was one problem with Coal, he was a puppy. The fact that he was a puppy was in no way his fault. But I'm still recovering, I have a 20 month baby old, another dog and husband that works very full time. I also have an interview for a very promising job coming up - but more on that later.

Well, that's the setup to my tears and screaming. My husband knew that Coal had become too much work and decided he had to go. Let me make this abundantly clear - I was not ready to say goodbye. And I have never felt a pain like this knowing that Coal was somewhere out in the world with someone else's family, that he would very easily forget me. So I struggled to find some sort of lesson from this mess.


I never owned Coal. In fact, I don't own my husband or my child. I don't own the words I'm typing or the coffee cup I drink from. You could argue that the words are mine, but who is going to cross check some chicks blog?

Several years ago my brother died. I won't go into the details because this is not what this is about. I'll save that whole story for another day. When he died we were obviously devastated. We picked out the coffin (awful by the way, my advice is go cheap no one ever sees it again) We picked out the flowers, and where we wanted people to send money to in lieu of flowers (which no one listens to anyway). You pick your music and verses and you are thrilled to have a woman priest because your brother was gay and it's just sort of a last jab, And if you're a sister like me, you do the eulogy.

All of that is nice, but your brother is gone and you realize you never really had him anyway. He was kind of on loan. And I think back to every moment, thinking what if I knew that? What if I knew that he was simply on loan for a short period of time? Would it change our relationship?

And that's just the people. So many people like stuff. My brother liked stuff. (Car, furniture, decor) Let me tell you getting all of his stuff to our home was quite a challenge. God bless my brothers on their journey because I could never-ever have been able to do that.

The thing is once we got all of his stuff that we couldn't donate we had huge piles of stuff in our home. I quickly became a"do you want that?" "could you use that?" IT even hurt some feelings. But is was all suff. We sadly and emotionally divided my brother's possessions knowing full well that the memories would never be replayed or replaced. It was one of the most difficult days of my life because I realized that none of the things were really "his" they were just things that would remind us of him.

My 100 year of grandmother passed away very recently. And I have to be honest, if someone broke into her house they would turn right around any run right back out that door! She had so much stuff (I think she was the inspiration for the TV show "Hoarders" she just had 9 kids and so many grandchildren you couldn't count to keep her in check.  As far as all of her "stuff" went you couldn't figure out what you were looking at, Everyone called her Queen Bee, because even though a lot of the things she bought were Kmart specials and Christmas gifts with no tags from 1973, those were her treasures. And boy did she sit on her throne. She may have been ordering from QVC, but that's her right, I mean she lived to be 100! Don't hate. But once she passed on those things were divided up and all of her belongings gone. (Well it's in progress). Sad as it sounds it became mounds and mounds of stuff.

I try to treasure the people in my life as I can, I'm not great at it. And I  definitely do not think of my elders as much as I should. But it's not just the elders, it's your friends you see everyday and cherish and call just to complain. They very well could be the one you'll find out in a month has cancer, or a brain tumor, a heart problem, or is suffering from deep and dark suicide. None of us truly know.

As heart breaking as losing my Grandmother recently, my brother, and Coal's short visit, it's a reminder to treasure the short time we have with one another. There's a mysterious ticking clock running out between everyone of us. We have no idea how much time we have with each other. And we can choose to live in fear or make the most of it and treat it as a blessing.

I look at my son and I pray for him each night that he would grow to be happy and healthy. And selfishly I wish that I would be there to see it. And one day (in a blink of an eye) he will leave me for a partner of his own because I don't own him. Because God just gave me the privilege of raising/renting him for awhile and every moment is precious. And what an honor.