The Orange Flag

I went to the cemetery today.  And as I drove up, I noticed the time.  It was right about the time Jason was putting Elliana into a basket that Funeral Home Man brought to the hospital, on this date, four months ago.

Four months.  She would have been four months old yesterday.  Cooing and smiling and developing a little personality.

I remember the morning we went to the cemetery to see Elliana's plot and (attempt to) pick out a headstone.  The day after I went home from the hospital.  Four days after my c-section.  You don't do things like that after major abdominal surgery.  You don't go places and pick out cemetery plots and headstones.  It felt so very wrong.  Cemetery Lady was very kind.  Very compassionate.  We sat around a conference table looking at a map of the cemetery and a piece of paper with headstone options.

So very wrong.

And then Cemetery Lady took us to what she affectionately called 'Baby Land' - the small piece of land in the cemetery just for babies.  I wish I felt affectionate towards that name, but I don't.  It sort of makes me want to throw up.  No, it does make me want to throw up.

I remember driving up, getting out of the van, and following Cemetery Lady to the edge of 'Baby Land' where a little orange flag marked the spot that Elliana's body would be buried the next day.

I don't remember if I said anything.  I think I cried.  What do you say at a moment like that?  'Yes, I like this spot.'  'This place is perfect.'  'I think Elliana will like it here.'

(Throwing shoes, wine glasses, fine china, vases and smashing laptops to pieces *here*.)

Fast-forward 3 days - October 12, I think.  We visited the cemetery.  The dirt was still freshly shoveled. There was hay on top of the dirt.  Pretty pink roses.

And that little orange flag was was sticking up out of the ground right next to Elliana's spot.

Confession:  my first thoughts were so incredibly self-centered.  Surely, that flag doesn't stay there all the time, just marking where the next plot is.  It's not very pretty.  If it has to be there, it should at least be pink.

My next thought:  What if another baby has died?

A couple days later, I had my answer.  Another mound of freshly shoveled dirt.  More hay.  Blue flowers.  A baby boy, one week old, had died.  Another mom had buried her baby.

It sounds weird, I know, but I think of them as neighbors.  I've never met those parents.  But when I go to visit Elliana and brush all of the dirt off of her stone with the little pink scrub brush I keep in the van, I clean Baby Boy's stone, too.

And yes, I really do keep a little pink scrub brush in the van to clean her stone.  It might be weird, but it's the only thing I can do to 'take care of her'.  I have no baby to feed, no diapers to change, no spit-up-covered clothes to wash.  I have a stone.  And a metal vase.  So I clean the stone, and I put pretty flowers in the vase.

Her flowers are still the pretty purple and yellow ones.  And there's a sparkly yellow butterfly in there, too.  But today, I don't care about the stupid sparkly butterfly.  Or fake purple flowers.  I just want her back.

My heart aches tonight.  Remembering the hours after Funeral Home Man took her away.  How I wanted to hold her just one more time.

Today when I went to the cemetery, the little orange flag was there.  Next to Baby Boy's stone.  Another mom will be burying her baby this week.