The Burden of a Christmas Visit Not Made

Unending rain this week, shunning the stores as much as I can, furtively looking for grave wreaths at the stores I did visit. I bought new ribbon to make bows for the wreaths, we have a stack of grave easels in the garden shed to attach the wreaths to and affix in the ground before the headstones. But here it is Christmas Eve and we won’t be going to the graves. This will be the first Christmas that we will not have made a visit since Justin’s death. I lay awake last night, conflicting emotions, guilt, sorrow, loneliness, my head pounds.

I want to go, I don’t want to go, I want to lay wreaths at my parent’s graves, at my brother Vincent’s grave, and then the last visit is to Justin. My heart sits there sometimes, as close to his earthly remains as it can be, remembering.

I realize why I hesitate to go to Justin’s grave, it is not the same as visiting my parents or my brother. To stand at your child’s grave feels different, confusing, strange, disorienting. Vulnerable. There is no where to hide standing at Justin’s grave. I have no computer screen, no safety of the walls of my home, no car to hide in. Open on all sides. No bushes or trees to give some essence of protection, exposed. My naked grief which cannot be contained at that bit of earth, raw, bleeding, sobs escaping. My head pounds.

Standing with the father of that child, a moment more intimate than the moment that gave that same child life. No privacy of the moment. Exposed in our grief, separate, unique, forever joined, forever isolated.

Enveloping silence, the walk back to the car. Boxes of tissues are kept and reached for, there are no words. Bottom lip swollen and raw from biting it, attempting to feign some sort of control. My head pounds.

That small bit of earth, it is not all we have left of him, but it is a place of meeting, a sacred moment, a time of recollection, communion, it is pilgrimage, removed from all that is comfortable and familiar.

The mud and grimness I cannot bear this week, the sea of grey stones, wet with rain. Forgive me son for not honoring your grave this Christmas, you are in our every thought, our every breath. You are in every batch of cookies, every purr of your beloved felines, each quiet moment. Merry Christmas Justin.