THOUGHTS BY A GRAVESITE

Whenever I am in Marietta on one of my business trips I will take a few minutes to stop at Jacob’s gravesite. A couple of years ago I wrote a blog about another one of my visits there. Here’s a link to it:  

https://embracinggrief.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-strange-dichotomy-about-cemeteries.html

Each time I’m there I will usually see one or two other people standing or sitting by the grave of their loved one.  I can only imagine what is going through their mind but here are some of my thoughts I am confronted with:

• His smile
• His laugh
• His love for life
• The nights together at home
• Our visits at Shorter, seeing his immense joy at being there
• His admiration of his older brother
• His devotion to his big sister
• His truly ‘undying’ love for his mother and father
• His love for God
• The hilarious funeral service we had for his pet gerbil, Furball (picture the Cosby show & the goldfish funeral)
• The numerous times I went on field trips and youth camps as a chaperone, so I could keep an eye on him
• The social bullying he had to endure
• His circle of friends that accepted him, supported him, and protected him
• The improbable beginning of life in Philadelphia and the repeated visits there for open heart surgeries
• The countless cardiologist visits in each city we lived in
• The bantering he enjoyed with his cath lab nurses at Egleston
• His ‘shark bite’ scar and his chest zipper
• Pacemaker checkups via the phone
• The times I had to give him shots (he claimed I enjoyed giving them to him entirely too much)
• Those ‘calls’ that were followed by hospitals visits and bad news
• Those hospital stays and long nights in sleeping rooms
• The inner circle of friends who would bring ‘appropriate’ food to him that he could eat while in the hospital
• Those that helped him with homework during his hospital stays
• Those scenes of watching him rolled into the surgery prep room, wondering if we’d see him alive again
• The two celebrations of successful heart transplants
• Wondering what impact did he have on people
• My wish that his nieces and nephews could have hugged him and played with him, to know him, not just our memories of him
• Wondering what would he be doing now if he had lived
• The flood of ‘what could have been’ thoughts
• The overarching sense of immense and continuing loss
• The promise of the resurrection and eventual reunion

Then looking at the path I will take back to the car … alone.