The Healing Starts

Well, we laid Samuel’s body to rest Saturday at Bear Creek Cemetery where his great grandparents are already buried and where his grandparents will be buried when they pass. Birdie and I have plots there as well. I am glad he is buried with family and not in a city plot where he would be forgotten if we had to move away from here. Finally having his funeral was somewhat of relief and burden off of our shoulders, yet it lends an act of finality and reality to this nightmare. We are also going to go to a memorial service at the hospital in May. Each year the hospital holds a service for the parents that have lost a child in the past year and we have been invited. I think this will be the first chance we have to meet with other people who have lost a child.

One of the interesting things I have learned from my mom was that his first name was the same as my great uncle’s. This great uncle was more like my mother’s father because he and my great aunt raised my mom. So in effect Samuel Earl was named after two great grandfathers.

The outpouring of love from our friends has been helpful as well. I am not sure how many times I have cried while reading the comments left here in the past week and a half. One of the things I have had a hard time with is finding time to get alone and pray and seek G_d in all of this. Birdie is now almost pushing me to get a hobby that would allow me to do this. I have a hard time with talking unless I am doing something, so I am taking up the one hobby that has interested me for years and never felt I had the resources to do it. I have always thought that archery was a powerful yet graceful sport, one requiring strength and precision to be good at. So I am taking up archery in order to give myself something to do when I just need to do something physical and need to pray.


P.S. Birdie has started writing again, it will be sporadic at first but she feels the need to talk about things.