lunch with my daughter

normally on sundays, my rock group goes out to lunch together after church. this week, everyone was either out of town with family or busy with other things. john was too tired after work and didnt come to church. i sat in the parking lot scrolling through my phone to try to find someone to have lunch with. when i found no one, i stopped at the coffee shop for some coffee and a bagel. (my fingers just then wanted to type "baby" instead of bagel.) there were some people sitting out on the patio enjoying coffee and conversation outside. i realized what an unseasonably beautiful day it is. crap. i hate beautiful days, hate them. i dont like feeling obligated to enjoy the weather. i heard thunder on christmas day. also unseasonable. i liked the angry sound of the thunder. I actually prayed and thanked God for sending me angry thunder on Christmas day. now, warm weather on december 27th? what gives? i dont begrudge anyone who was too busy to have lunch with me. no offense, but if i had it my way, i didnt really want to have lunch with any of you anyway. on an unseasonably beautiful december day, i want to sit on the patio of rocky river coffee and eat lunch with my infant daughter in her stroller, while Daddy catches up at home on his much needed sleep. staying out of the house to keep it quiet for a little longer, just me and my baby.

coffee and bagel in hand, i thought of something. awhile back, a bereaved mother who lives here in NC, was saying that her son was buried in arizona where he died. so when she is wishing she could visit him, she just goes to a local cemetary. she says they are peaceful places. so i was thinking i would go visit one. ive written about this before, my desire to try this. so i stopped at the grocery store and bought some pink roses, hoping to seek out some baby graves.

i went to the nearest cemetary, and i felt a range of emotions, mostly awkwardness. this is ridiculous, what am i doing here? it's on a busy intersection. actually, right across from where i got pulled over yesterday. lots of traffic passing by, i felt like people were staring at me. stupid idea, i was thinking. i started walking past the headstones anyway. lots of war veterans. this is a very old cemetary. people born in the 1800s even. people who died in their 80s and 90s. what lucky families, i thought. burying grandmothers and grandfathers. gah! im not going to find any babies here.

a full bouquet of pink roses in hand, the thorns repeatedly pricking my fingers, i came across the grave of an old woman who died on december 28 in the 1990s. i put a pink rose on the stone. i wanted to leave them for babies only, but i was afraid i wouldnt find any, so i left her one, thinking someone might come see her tomorrow. i said a prayer for her. i hope they find warmth that someone left her a rose. i kept walking. maybe i'll find someone who was born or died on july 30 sometime, since im not gonna find any babies here amongst the old and war veterans.

i was wrong.

i found the grave of a baby girl who lived from feb 12 - feb 16, 1960. i thought of a little boy who's mother i met online who lived almost those exact same days this year (feb 13-16). there was a fresh christmas wreath on her grave. someone is still grieving her. i left her 4 pink roses, one for each day of life. then i noticed the grave next to hers... a woman's first name, with the same last name as the baby. 1923-2009. she would have been 37 in 1960. i bet this is the mother. buried right next to each other. finally died this year. finally reunited. the grave was fresh, a mound not yet quite back to the normal level of earth. recently buried. another fresh christmas wreath lay on this grave. no real headstone yet, just the marker with the dates of birth and death. the same funeral home we used for kathlyn. that still hits me like a 90mile an hour baseball.. why again did i plan a funeral this year?? i felt relief for this mother who died this year.. 49 years of grieving her 4 day old baby. my prayer was that she believed in the same Savior as I do, so that they are together in heaven now. gone for me in the moment was the awareness of the busy traffic around me. the warm winter breeze was on my face and blowing my hair. this, i thought, was as close to lunch with my daughter as i could get. that other mom was right.. the cemetary is such a peaceful place.

i laid a pink rose on the mother's grave too, and kept walking. there was a headstone with another christmas wreath and a stuffed monkey. this was the grave of two children.. it said "son" on the right and "daughter" on the left. both children in their 20s and died a few years apart. i didnt see any parents graves around them. not babies by age, but someone's "babies" still. i left a rose for them too.

i came across a set of headstones with the name "Davis". there was one in the middle of all them that said only that surname. there were many of them surrounding it, including "John William Davis" Jr and Sr. i shivered at the site of that name on a grave. i prayed for John's safety at work. i left a pink rose for the Davis family. We have Kathlyn's ashes here with us. i pretended for a second that the large center "Davis" stone was for her.

i found another grave for a baby girl who lived for 4 days, this one in the 1930s. i was running out of roses, so i only left her one, unlike the other 4 day old baby. near to hers, in what i believed was from the same family (it appears there are many family plot sets in this cemetary), was the grave for a baby girl with the same first name who died at age 1 & 1/2 in the 1940s. i wondered if her family named this little girl after the baby who had died, and then felt like they had tempted fate with her death. i hope not.. i know how debilitating the guilt can be after the death of a child. i left a pink rose for the little toddler and continued on. i didnt get very far. i came across two graves, also what i believe was in the same family set, that looked like some of the oldest headstones in the cemetary. even the ones with the dates in the 1800s looked newer, like they'd been updated and/or replaced. these looked like they were straight from an old horror movie. i could barely read what they said. another 2 year old little girl (cant remember the year, but it was the 1910s i think) and an 8 year old boy, probably her brother, who lived from 1910 to 1918. there is just so much sadness in this world. across the world and across time. this is just one small cemetary and yet there are so many children here. back then, the death of children was probably much more common. either way, i firmly believe that no child should have to die anywhere. if 1 child alone died in the world each year, that would be too common for my heart. i left these two children my last two roses. i still had unwalked ground left in the cemetary. i started out afraid that i wouldnt be able to give all my pink roses, and yet, i didnt even make it through. next time, i will start at the other end and look for more babies. pray for more sad families across time.

i came home and let the dogs out of our room to go outside. john didnt wake up. kathlyn's christmas blanket, which lives on our bed now, was snuggled against his face.

what a sad, lovely, meaningful afternoon.