Memorial Day

Last year on Memorial Day, I had an eerie recognition that the day meant something different to me now than it ever had.  I ignored it.   I don’t know what we did that day.  I just got through the kids having a day off of school.  At that time, each day was still a blur even though it had been by that time, it had been 10 months since Grant died. 

Death.  Oh yeah.  That’s what Memorial Day is for.  To remember the past and gone people of the earth.  I couldn’t comprehend that it was a day for someone in our family.   This year, that eerie feeling hit me again, but this time, I realized, this is a day that we should probably do something for dad. 

Well, I don’t want to celebrate, not that he’s dead.  But there is a part of me that feels the recognition now.  There is comprehension.  Looking back at the pictures from that day, last year, I have many pictures from the day before and the day after Memorial Day.  Only one for Memorial Day.  A coupon, for my favorite blankets at 50% off. 

I’m sure that’s what I did that first memorial day, was buy a new blanket at 50% off for myself.  In fact, I remember now thinking how much comfort those blankets gave me.  They are so soft.  I’d wrap myself in the softness of that blanket and it was the only thing that brought me comfort and peace.

Lying down at night that blankets peace allowed me to feel safe enough to fall asleep.  To fall asleep out of the nightmare of pain I was living in and into the relief of sleep.  The peace it brought was only while sleeping. I’d wake up again and again to the pain of living a life without Grant and how much it hurt.

I’d wake up to how much I wasn’t willing to feel that and so I numbed it, which made it worse.  That’s what I remember now, from last Memorial Day.  I couldn’t bring myself to “celebrate” the dead or dad or anything having to do with death.  I still hadn’t gotten a grave stone for him. 

I didn’t want to honor him for dying, his honorary day should be Father’s Day.  He shouldn’t be dead, so he shouldn’t be honored for something that he shouldn’t be.  I believe that’s where the anger started.  Perhaps at least consciously?  At this point I don’t’ really remember. 

From then to now, there’s been a lot of that anger, so much so, that I haven’t even wanted to make a gravestone or memorial or anything to “honor” this dead guy. I didn’t want him to be dead, so I don’t want to honor that he is. 

This last week, just one week before this 2nd Memorial Day without Grant; I’ve started to feel that perhaps it would be ok, time for something. I could do to make a gravestone, a place for him to reside, set in stone.  I could look at where we are and memorialize it in stone.  Face it.  Look at it.

I could give the boys and myself a place to sit and look at the stone that will memorialize Grant and accept that it is now written in stone that his life is over and mine continues. His children’s lives continue and it’s all a part of the life cycle. 

Whether the timing is right or not.  Whether the order of things is the way it was planned or wanted or not and for me it is not.  Yet it is real and truth.  Just this last week, I felt enough peace within myself that I went online and started to look at monuments or headstones that I can make into the gravestone for my husband.

The father of my children will have a space for them to sit, pause and look. They will have a place to contemplate.  They will see the date, November 21, 1980 - July 29, 2019.  They will remember that between those dates is the life he lived, the latter part with then and it ended.  That’s all he got. 

I hope that for them and me that we can remember that there is no end date yet to where we’re at.  Between now and that time, what will we do?  What will we create?  Become?  I hope it will be the best of each of us.  The best possible. These dates that were too short to me, will become a part of something better and greater for each of us. 

It’s not because there’s no other option and there’s not, but because it’s the right thing and our choice is to take on the hard things. Our choice is that the things that don’t go our way, the things we wish we could change but can’t that we make them into something better than they could be without the hard things. 

That’s what we get to choose to create. It is the best or the worst.  We can be a victim or be our own hero.  We choose to be sad and depressed or to transform that into greatness.  The truth is, that none of us get out of this life alive.  None of us get out of this life without pain, being victimized, hurting and many changes of plans. 

What is it that I want memorialized?  Not death, but victory.  I want to memorialize the choice that we all have. That we get to transform pain into peace, being victimized into strength. When plans change, we learn to adapt and become better than we planned, because we didn't plan this.  It was given and so it is.   

The experiences of life are given and we can make peace with them or make them our enemy.  Either way, what we get out of it is what we make from it. It comes down to choosing peace.  Peace from pain or pain.  The peace, the strength, the power of being better than I could be is what I want to memorialize. 

So this Memorial Day, you won’t find us at a cemetery or at Dad's gravesite. I'm still working on that, but I’m now open to it.  Next year, there will be a picture of the five of us standing by daddy’s grave in whatever form that ends up taking.

These ashes that I store in my bathroom cupboard, cause I don't’ want to see them, will have a permanent and memorialized honorable home, but not this year or last year.  Last year I couldn’t contemplate it.  This year I’m just now opening and accepting enough to process it and next year, God willing, you’ll see another transformation. 

But this year, I’m taking the boys to Nickelcade for Memorial Day.  Daddy took them there.  It was one of their favorite places to go with him and it doesn’t hurt me as much anymore to take the boys places daddy did. I know that now it’s me taking them there, because daddy is gone.

This year I’ll take them there. I’ll watch them play.  I’ll see their smiles and know that we’re celebrating the memorialized memory of Daddy dates to Nickelcade.  I’m ready to live a little better this year and turn another piece of pain into peace.