Headstone

The first time I went back to see Sonzee after she passed it was 7 days after we buried her and the day before her 5th birthday.  I went into the office to ask if there were any samples of things I could look at to just get ideas for what we might want for her headstone.  I am pretty sure I caught them off guard because they normally don’t even discuss the process until a couple of months after the burial.  They didn’t specifically have anything for me to take home, but I set up a time to come back and go through books and take a walk around.  By the end of the week I had ordered everything I wanted, but we didn’t have to have the inscriptions ready.

I didn’t know what I wanted to see written on her headstone, and Sam was hardly on board with me placing the order of the items in any case so we were definitely not discussing what would be written on them.  Fast forward to now, 11 weeks after she has passed and 10 weeks since I started the process of this project.  I have walked the rows of the cemetery countless times and googled numerous headstones. This ranks up there with the importance of choosing a name for your child and worst thing to have to do as a parent.  This only gets written once and it’s for forever, making it such a hefty responsibility.

Over the last few days I’ve been writing everything in my mind, and even attempted to draw the stone outline and the words on paper.  I am trying to make sure I do her proper justice and include her essence.  It is such a difficult concept to grasp, writing words to go on your now would be 5 year olds headstone. I don’t want it too juvenile, but at the same time she was 4.  I don’t want to leave something off that was important to her, but she never could communicate verbally for us to know if we hit the mark with our understanding of her likes and dislikes.  Sam and I are both inspired and pulled towards different quotes; it’s hard to honor all 3 of us, and at the root of it all is just an anger and sadness that this is even part of our journey at all.