Last Night
Jason's stone went in back in May but this is the first time I have been able to make the 8 hour trip out here to see it. It's beautiful - it's a blue granite from Norway that we picked out for our kitchen. We didn't get the kitchen but he got the granite.
I got to see it in the dark, with a deep misting, snowing, fog surrounding me and deadening the night noises. And I cried. This is the only place on earth where I talk to Jason and not God. I only make it here about 4 times a year but I feel like I can reach him here. It is as if we both meet at this memorial place and acknowledge the ending of our story. In this one place it seems to be okay to forget all of the good and bad in this future I work for--to just let it go and immerse myself in missing him, mourning my loss. I weep for the life he'll never know and the one I must now make my own. In this place, time matters naught - 2 minutes, 2 years, tonight the ragged edges of the wounds on my heart throb in agony. The 'why him's so closely kept under lock and key are set free in the night and play havoc with my heart. Tomorrow I will lock them back up, lay roses on the snow and get back to living. Tonight. Tonight I need him. I need him to share this burden of grief with me, for what we lost can only be understood between us.
The catharsis is complete and leaves me exhausted and stripped. I go in from the gentle snow to celebrate Christmas with his family. We laugh and smile and joke - the blessed healing is wonderfully apparent in our little family group. And yet...I am left with a question...how long can we sorrow so deeply? Will ever a time come that a lonely Christmas graveside visit on a hauntingly beautiful night could simply evoke loss and sadness and not a swift return to the day he was lost? Will sorrow always be soul deep?
I do not know. So I sleep and wait for morning.
