Recently, my husband and I had to attend to the details of deciding where we would lay our daughter to rest. I have known so many losses during my lifetime, that the details of doing this are very well known to me, but that hasn’t made doing these tasks any easier. The majority of my family have already passed away, and are laid to rest in a lovely, picturesque, cemetery in Michigan. One of which I used to visit quite often throughout my childhood and would visit not just to mourn, but to pray, and even play and enjoy the pretty park-like setting that surrounds it. I have memories of going there that are nearly as old as I am. They go as far back as I can truly remember.
The first death I experienced was my Grandfathers death in 1972. I was 5 years old. Many more deaths followed in close succession, 15 more of them before I turned 20 years old. I lost all of my grandparents, all of their siblings and spouses, my father, and most of my aunts and uncles, as well as a few of my cousins. I watched Cancer, Heart attacks, Strokes, Rare Diseases, Car accidents, one by one, remove my loved ones from this earth. As a child it was confusing, bewildering, and no one could give me good explanations for why they all died, and I could find little comfort anywhere, or in anything. Even my own pastor, missed the opportunity to share the gospel with me and point me towards Christ’s comfort. Unfortunately, my pastor, he committed suicide, right before my husband and I were married. It seems he may not have know for himself the same comfort and hope I was seeking. Maybe that was the reason he couldn’t share it with me.
I shared with my husband my memories of visiting the cemetery, often one summer that I spent with my grandmother. We had just lost my dad that year, and she had lost her husband, my grandfather the year before. So, I visited the cemetery weekly that summer with her and even “played” there, during my childhood. Which my husband said, “that’s a really morbid playground don’t you think?” Yes, today I would say, having fond memories of playing at the cemetery around the ‘remembrance pond’ and feeding the swans and getting chased by them, are not normal childhood memories for most children, but they are mine; and Yes, it is, a little morbid. But I didn’t know any different then. I didn’t realize few other children were experiencing what I was. I thought grief and loss was a normal. I thought visiting hospitals, funeral homes, and cemeteries was a normal part of childhood. I also didn’t know how much the grief and loss was shaping my world and my worldview. I wasn’t aware of how much it shaped who I grew up to be as an adult.
Visiting the cemetery, this time, to make arrangements to lay me daughter to rest, I knew was going to be as equally difficult as a few of my previous visits. Five years earlier, I had laid my mother to rest. Just before that, while my mother was still alive, she wanted to visit the gravesites of all of her loved ones. It was on her bucket list, so we did it. I didn’t realize how hard it was gonna be for us both. We were both pretty sick, physically, at the time, (I didn’t know it, but while I was caring for her, while she had pancreatic cancer, I also had another rare form of cancer myself). Our health was failing in similar ways, and we were both struggling to physically do the things we had planned. It was hard for us both physically and emotionally to go to the cemetery. It took so much out of us, that at the time, I regretted going, but later came to really appreciate the visit.
My mother shared some things about each of her loved ones that day that perhaps I’d never known without our visit that day. It was really hard for my mother to go to each gravesite, but I understood her need, and later I was able to reflect on how meaningful that day still is to me now. It helped me put a time-line together of all our losses, and put my childhood into a new perspective of sheer amazement. I kept thinking, ‘it’s astonishing that we too were not among our loved ones with all we’d been through losing all of them. I thought ‘how is it that we survived at all?’ It has indeed been a great mercy to be among the living all these years.
I didn’t know how hard it would be visiting all of my loved ones at once, until we did it. After visiting all of the gravesites, my mother said, “I’m the only one not in the ground.” It wasn’t a completely accurate assessment, my sister and I are not there yet, and her sister-in-law isn’t either. But I knew what she meant. Nearly everyone she loved and cared about was already there, and soon she would be too. She also wondered if anyone would be left to remember and visit any of these graves at all, after her passing. But, we still remember her, and can visit these graves whenever we want. Maybe adding my daughter to that long list, will give me another reason to go to the cemetery and visit, and continue to process these many losses. And, if my grandson, who is only turning 3 years old this year, later on, as he grows up, wants to know where his mom is laid to rest, I can take him there, just as my grandmother did with me, and I can tell him stories, and answer his questions, just as my grandmother did for me. That summer I spent with her, we bonded over our grief over my dad, and grandfather, which were her son & her husband. She gave me permission to miss him, to cry over him, to talk about him. She had a lot of photos of my dad and granddad that I’d never seen, I looked through them all and asked her about 100 questions. I’m sure I wore her out. But she was gracious and patient with me and shared all she could. Today, I now realize how much it must have hurt her to do so, but it was bonding and healing to me. It also helped me to remember him, because I was only 12 years old when he died.
We all want our loved ones to remember us. My mothers comments during our cemetery visit together struck me deeply. “Who will be left to remember me?” She said. I also finally understood her struggle of both wanting to visit the cemetery, but desiring to avoid it as well. There were so many loved ones already there, too many. As a child, I didn’t mind visiting the cemetery because it was like a playground to me. I didn’t know how much sorrow and pain was involved in each visit for my mother or my grandmother. As I grew older, of course my awareness changed, and so did my visiting the cemetery. As I grew older, I soon began to get the true picture of the affects the cemetery visits had upon an adult. Soon I was avoiding the cemetery as well, because of the memories and emotions it triggered. It just became harder and harder to be reminded of more and more loved ones who were no longer here in my life.
As I married and began having children of my own, I never took them to the cemetery with me, I always went alone. I wanted to protect them from the harsh realities of death and loss instead of experiencing what I did in childhood. They never got to meet most of my family, so they had no connection to anyone I was grieving over, I hoped none of them would begin to experience the losses in their own lives as I did. But during their teenage years, their grandparents began to fall ill and death became a reality of life for them as well.
Since my daughter’s passing, I now understand even better what my mother was trying to communicate to me and how difficult it was for her to know in advance, she too would be among our loved ones. Because I also battled with cancer, and my life could have ended as well, I could now relate to the frustration of not being able to stop it, and wanting to lessen the pain for others that would surely come. The pre-planning, that one set of my grandparents did for their loved ones, now made some sense to me. But my husband had not experienced much loss in his life, and he makes far better decisions than I do under immense stress. So, pre-planning was “out of the question” for him. My husband wouldn’t discuss or pre-plan for my death while I had cancer and at the time it really disappointed me. I wanted to do that to ease my families possible suffering later, but he felt it would add to their suffering at the time. I don’t think either one of us was either right or wrong. I feel better preparing for the worst, and hoping for the best. My husband hopes for the best always and will deal with the worst when it actually happens. Our personalities are different and therefore how we cope and grieve is as well. Pre-planning for your own death ahead of time, is indeed a ghastly duty, but I’m a planner and feel better being prepared. God himself slightly prepared me for my daughters death and it helped me. But, I also agree with my husband, that it doesn’t help him.
So, how you go about laying your loved one to rest I believe is a very personal process full of many decisions, with no exact set of steps to follow. Everyone must find the way that works best for them. Some people handle it better than others. My advice would be to come along side anyone you see struggling to do it, and help them, by asking what exactly would be most helpful to them. In some cases, someone else may just need to swoop in and take care of everything, in others, they may just need to listen and ‘be there’ as support while they accomplish each task for themselves. I just know watching my mother go through that process over and over with each of her loved ones had a compounding effect in her life. I thought as I watched, ‘it shouldn’t be so hard, why does she have to make all these decisions right now when her loved one just died?’ Each death was harder, each loss, full of choices and decisions, was more and more overwhelming for her. I wish I had been older and more helpful to her to get through it.
Of course, now that I’m doing the same, I remember her struggles and they get mixed up with my own. I want to protect my loved ones from hurting and second guessing any decisions that they might have to make for me. I won’t be here to help them. I don’t want my sons wondering “what dress would mom want to wear? what songs would she choose, what flowers does she like?” I got caught up in doing the same thing as I was standing in my daughters closet trying to select an outfit for her to wear for the viewing, and I almost called out to her through her own home, as though she was there and could answer. “Hey, Rachel, Which dress would you like to wear to your funeral?” It was a ridiculous moment, that made me cry and laugh at the same time. Maybe I’ll laugh again one day, when I get to tell my daughter that story in heaven.
Ironically, my daughter told me what she would do if I died before her, I was shocked at her “matter of fact” and humorous plans she had for me. She would do what was practical, efficient, and the least painful but quickest way through the whole process she could devise. It was comical what she shared, it makes me laugh inside, each timeI think about it, because she won’t have the opportunity to do it. Thankfully, we’ve had some time, 8 months, to plan for this second part of laying my daughter to rest, her internment, and even though it’s still hard, it is giving us all a chance to remember her, and put more closure to our pain even though we still continue to miss her. It’s also given me an opportunity to select a place for my husband and I, and we are putting, our daughter with us, an option I didn’t know I would ultimately have. It’s another mixed blessing, I would say.
If you are struggling with the details of laying your loved one to rest, or know you will someday, I hope instead you see some value in it and find some healing as you work through the difficult choices and tasks involved. I pray you will find the support and help you need to do what is necessary without feelings of regret our guilt. I don’t believe there is a right or wrong way particularly to accomplish this.
If you ever have the opportunity to help someone else in the midst of their great grief and see they need assistance, I hope you realize what a great blessing you could be to them as loss is thrust upon them unexpectedly. Death is a harsh reality of life, it will come to us all. We all could use some comfort, support, and help getting through it. If you’re ever prompted to come alongside someone in their grief or actual preparations of their own death, or that of their loved ones, I hope this article helps you help them.
There are mixed blessings in laying your loved one to rest. Be blessed, Susan