19. GRIEF RITUALS | Creating rituals in grief do wonders for healing your heart. Do you have any grief rituals? Maybe something you do on special dates like birthdays or anniversaries? How do these rituals help you?
We have several. When Emily was born, I ordered Christmas stockings for all of us and had our names put on them, including one for Kayla. When I am buying gifts, we also buy her a new stuffed animal to put at her grave. We put it in her stocking, and then in the spring we take it to her grave. When fall comes, we "retire" it from the grave (and give it to Emily). Side story about that....I actually ordered three the Christmas I was pregnant with Emily; for me, Ryan, and Kayla. But I was too nervous to order Emily's until she was here. I couldn't decide what to put on ours, our names, or mom and dad. So I polled one of the boards I posted on, on The Bump asking which we should go with. I explained that I was ordering one for our angel, but that I was too scared and superstitious to order one for Emily yet. Most people gave me good opinions, but this one girl responded snarkily with "why are you ok with putting mom and dad on them, but not ok with ordering her stocking yet". I responded back with, "Uh, because I am already a mom to my angel, and even if God forbid something happened to Emily, I would still be her mom", She never responded to that, but I hope she felt really stupid for her comment.
We also take whatever dollar amount of money we would have spent on her Christmas presents and make a donation to St. Jude. I always fill out a card when I make the donation and it gets mailed to us, saying that this donation has been made in Kayla's memory. I ALWAYS cry when the card comes. It makes me feel good that despite our pain, we are doing our small part to help other children, and hopefully prevent some other parents from experiencing a horrific loss.
On her birthday, we go to the cemetery and do a balloon release, even last year when it was pouring rain. It obviously wasn't a big production, we just got out of the car, and let them go, and also got completely drenched, but it was her birthday and I simply would not accept doing it any other day. On her first birthday, we were headed to her grave, and that section of the cemetery has only one road to get to that entire area, and the cemetery crew had this big hose going across the road, pumping water out of some of the flooded areas since we had had a lot of rainfall that spring.
You cannot drive over the hose when it is running, so any time a car needed to go down that road they had to shut the hose down. I am normally a very accommodating person, perhaps too accommodating and I don't like to inconvenience people and or be what I fear is being rude. So my husband was like I guess we'll have to come back another day when he saw them pumping the water. I said nope, it's our baby's birthday, her FIRST birthday. They're getting paid to sit there and run that hose, and it is during business hours, so we're going.
After the cemetery we usually get a cake and/or go out to dinner or something special. We keep meaning to "adopt a grave" which is where you find a grave that looks like no one visits very often, clean it up, trim the grass around it, and leave flowers. But with her birthday being on March 24th, it's often still quite chilly and/or snowy so we've yet to do it. Her due date would have been July 26th, maybe this year we'll start the adopt a grave tradition to do on that day every year.
Since I was a little kid, I dreamed of one day being married and having a family. I would write birth announcements for my fictional children, I would make silly cards on the computer and sign them with my make-believe husband (usually whoever I liked at the time) and childrens' names. So when I was pregnant with Kayla, I was so excited to finally be able to send out a Christmas card with my real family's names on them....Love Ryan, Amy, and Kayla. But, we didn't get to do that, among other things. Once Emily arrived, I was not brave enough to write all of our names including Kayla's....I know I shouldn't care what people think, but it seems so weird to write Kayla's name, but it feels so wrong not to.
So I do neither, I just write "the insert last name here". It makes me sad, because I would love to write everyone's names, but I just cannot bear to leave Kayla off. The first year sending out cards after Emily was born, I had our last name printed on the front, and wrote Love Ryan, Amy, and Emily on the back, but the second I mailed them I felt terrible and I won't ever do that again. Kayla is a part of our family and I cannot stand to not write her name, as if she never existed.
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