I remember when my mother died on April 19, 2016, my family members were discussing funeral arrangements. My father was looking through my mother's closet to see what clothes to pick for her to wear in the casket. After her body was whisked off by the funeral parlor staff, my brothers, our father and aunt all left the building. I drove back home to Rochester thinking that I would see my mother's body one final time in the coffin at the wake.
Little did I know that those plans changed.
I realized a couple of days after my mother's death that I didn't know who the pallbearers that would be carrying her coffin were so I texted my sister-in-law and asked her, "Who are mom's pallbearers?" My sister-in-law texted me back, "She's going to be cremated."
I lost it.
What????? Cremation???
My father decided to go with cremation instead. It wasn't so much that she was being cremated that bothered me, it was the fact that I had this notion in my head that I would see her body one last time before she was buried. Now that was not going to happen. That sense of closure was taken from me without any communication. I wasn't given the option of going back to Syracuse to see her body before the cremation. If I had that, my sense of closure - with that part of her death - would have been helpful for me.
Turns out there must have been a reason for that change because little did my brothers and I know that we would lose our father less than 10 months later.
Our father was working on the headstone and burial plans before he had his massive stroke on February 7, 2017. He would be dead 11 days later.
Burials in the winter are pretty much unheard of in the Northeast given that the ground is too hard to dig. We decided to wait until August - the month that was both our mother and father's birthdays. Dad's birthday is August 6, Mom's birthday is August 20. We buried them on August 19, 2017.
When we buried them, two of my closest friends joined me. Jess has been a dear friend to me (and my family) for over 30 years and Nicole for 14 years. Nicole was so kind to interpret the burial service. Father Daley from the church and Nicole were the only two standing facing North while my brothers, their wives and children, me and several other family members were standing facing South. Nicole told me, after the service was finished, that a group of deer joined the service from o'er yonder. They also left right when the service was completed so we did not have the chance to see them. I'm a firm believer that our loved ones communicate in a variety of ways, including through the beautiful and powerful forces of nature.
Each family member and friend put a red rose near the marble box holding both our parents' ashes. Then everyone left to head over to the small gathering planned. I stayed behind as I wasn't content with leaving like this. I wanted to stay with them until they were put into the sacred ground and buried.
I stood in front of the headstone and saw that two graveyard workers were nearby. They were obviously waiting for me to leave before they went ahead and did their work. I asked Nicole if she could ask them to please come over and start the burial. They came over and put the ashes into the ground. I then proceeded to add two of the roses and the ceramic figurine that my father got my mother on their honeymoon which she loved and held dear to her heart until the day she left this world. Then I asked them to please go ahead and start to shovel the dirt into the empty hole.
There they lay, in their final resting place. I miss them - so deeply - everyday.
Every. Day.
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