The Dancer - Andrew

The marker was installed last week. Gosh that seems weird. His grave was temporarily marked by this plastic thing until last Friday. Now it's finished. We will hold a private ceremony and that is pretty much our last official thing I guess you could say to close out that chapter of our life as a family. I still want to make some kind of memory box or something for the little guy. A photo album. Maybe a video.

Then his dancer will come to our house to be with us. The funeral home has a ceremony every summer in their butterfly garden to honor children that have died. An artist makes a steel dancer with your child's name carved into it for you to have. It's donated by a local group. We missed it the first year for some reason. I felt so sad that we didn't get a dancer that I talked to the funeral home and they sent us another invite for this year's ceremony.

Mark didn't want to go. We had other plans that weekend that he wanted to adjust and just forget about this. That broke my heart. For some reason, I wanted to do this one. We've ignored the other memorial events that funeral has offered. This one seemed special to me. Nice. I wanted a dancer with Andrew's name on it. Like he was dancing around.

So I told Mark that I was doing it. I needed to and I would see if I could find someone to go with me if he wouldn't. Inside I was so deeply hurt that he might not go but didn't express it. I know his way of grieving so differs from mine and wanted to allow for that even though I knew if he didn't show up, it would offend me and hurt me so much. That I would be very upset at him for it and really struggle with forgiving him over it.

Well, although I know he wasn't thrilled, he said he would go. We'd bring the boys and we'd do it since it was that important to me. I was so grateful and the hurt began to subside.

That ceremony took forever it seemed. 30 minutes of sharing poems, listening to songs and then each family lighting a candle and saying our special person's name to honor our loved one. I cried almost the whole time. The boys did pretty good staying still and quiet as I wished for the time to pass. I just wanted the dancer and to go. When they finally released us to find our dancers, I beelined for the door with the boys following closely afterwards and quickly I saw Andrew's dancer and about lost it completely. We took it out to Andrew's grave and I told Mark we would bring it home to be with us after we dediate the marker. I wanted something of Andrew with us. He didn't argue but I don't think he really wants this.