Formerly Creepy

I have to be honest. There are a few things I always thought were creepy: cemeteries, urns in homes, open caskets, and thrift stores. Wouldn't you know that I'd have experience with each one of these in my life. Such is life (or death).

I'll start with the easier of the four, thrift stores. My understanding as a child was that people died and then their items were donated to thrift stores. I felt they were dead as they wore the clothing and it was gross to wear dead-person clothing. Obviously, that's ridiculous. I know that. While I know (as an adult) that I was misinformed despite my mom telling me repeatedly that was not the case, I had developed my own {albeit stubborn} opinion. Now I'm not creeped out and have actually purchased some items from thrift stores.

Cemeteries are next up. Two of my blog friends recently posted about cemeteries and their visits. I don't handle death well and always thought it was gross to be in the presence of a bunch of dead people. The whole idea of maggots, formaldehyde, velvet-lined boxes just made me all sick inside. Blame it on Hollywood movies, zombies, grave-diggers? Maybe. I have not experienced many deaths in my family. Though grandparents have died, I've only attended one funeral for them and two total funerals in my life. I've been to two graves in my entire life that I can remember: a friend's mother, and my great-grandfather. I was itching to get out of that dead park ASAP each time. I now understand that people visit cemeteries because people they love are there (well, their bodies) and it makes them feel a bit closer to them. My friend Keleen who lost her baby Addi the same day we lost Andrew to stillbirth wrote about visiting a cemetery on her blog today. Cemeteries are less creepy to me now. I drive by one quite close to our home often (and ironically right next to my OB and the hospital where I gave birth to Andrew) and look at the ground differently. I see all these headstones and inscriptions as tributes to loved ones. It's a place full of love, really. There is someone out there missing a loved one and that was how they decided to remember them.

Next, obviously, are open caskets. My great-grandfather had one and I did not attend the viewing. My personal interest was to remember him as he was living. I didn't need to see him again when I knew it was just a body. To an extent, I still agree with this. Not only do I really dislike the idea of my loved one being preserved, beautified, and pumped full of chemicals, but it's just a body. It's not the person I knew and they are no longer able to communicate with me. I understand why people prefer this method, but I never attached myself to the whole idea. I will not have an open casket at my own funeral. Both Ray and I want to be cremated, just as our son has been. Unless you've had a child cremated, you can't even come close to imagining what it felt as I just typed those words. It's heart wrenching. We've always wanted to be cremated, so when we had to sign over our son's body in the hospital {seriously!?}, we knew he would also be cremated. Do I understand more the interest to see our loves ones and touch/hold/be in the presence of, absolutely. I held my deceased child and took photos with him. I touched his cool skin. Having been dealt this awful card, I would've wanted nothing more than to spend time with his body though knowing "he" was no longer with us. If there were a house fire, my son and our photographs would be the two things I'd desperately want to save. There's irony in there, but I'm not willing to point it out.

Now on to cremation. My mom used to work in a funeral home that had a crematorium inside. I always thought it was disgusting! My former self would've said, "Gross, that's a dead person in a jar?! In your HOUSE?!" And now... now I'm the person who wants nothing more than to have her son in her home where he belongs. He may not be alive, but it's his home and he is our son. It may be gross, but this is all we have of him. I don't have a shrine and I don't draw attention to him, but he is there. He belongs here more than anyone else to step foot into our home, so I don't have apologies to make. It's just one of the many ways I've changed throughout the course of these 4 1/2 months.

He's not in a jar. He's in a blue, heart-shaped urn. And the most heart-wrenching thing about it all {as if that's not enough, right?} is that not all of him is in that small urn. I struggle with this thought. It makes me cry--like right now. I guess knowing my son is dead, him being cremated and his body "living" in an urn is enough to make anyone cry, but this makes me cry even harder: he DIDN'T fit. That's right. It turns out that full-term babies don't always "fit" baby urns because they are rare to die at full term. I wouldn't think they were that rare, but it turns out there just isn't a "place" for our babies. They're too large for the "baby" urns that I believe were made in their size for babies born premature {vs. full-term} but the "regular" sized urns are far too large for the amount of mass my cremated child makes up. He still has mass. Still volume. But unfortunately doesn't fit into any category. I hate that he's a bit of an outsider. But not in our home. He is part of us and deserves his place with us. I don't know what we will do with his body once we die eventually, but I do think he will need to be with us, whatever that means.

When we picked him up from the funeral home on that very gloomy day, he sat on my lap during the drive home. I was surprised how heavy he was. I'd never held a dead person before. I was surprised and disappointed that he had a label on the bottom that read "Baby Wilson" and it didn't say his name. I was disappointed that it was a stupid piece of label tape that someone actually had to type, print out, and peel onto a very small urn. I know labels can't be stupid. Whatever. I hated seeing the beautiful name we chose perfectly for our firstborn printed on another box that held the rest of him that didn't have a place.

So there you have it. My insides, out. Literally and figuratively written about on this very page.