We are honored to have Aurelia of Losing Chiara as a guest writer today. Aurelia is a mother of 3 children, 2 living. Her daughter Chiara was born still in August 2012. She writes, "22 months into this grief I find myself still searching for ways to incorporate her into my life, to honor her memory."
A cemetery is a good place
to take your sorrow.
Even if the one you grieve is not buried there,
you are still in such good company.
Monuments to lives and loves all around.
Widowers walking the grounds for exercise,
and to be close to their wives.
I walk past the graves,
read the names, do the math.
I am looking for the children,
the babies.
Some are all grouped together in the baby garden.
Chimes and whirlygigs flying in the breeze.
Tiny stones,
most with just one date on them,
a birth and death day.
Some are within large family plots,
“to our sweet angel Silvio”
“our daughter Lizzie”
“our beloved baby”
now all cradled in the earth with grandparents, aunts, uncles.
Some are not named, an inscription on a bench for all
“children known only to God”.
And what of you, my darling girl?
Your ashes reside on a shelf in my house,
but I feel you in these places.
I carry you, my love for you, my sorrow for you,
everywhere.
Here in the cemetery where I learned to ride my bicycle as a child,
where my grandparents and great-grandparents are buried,
my sorrow feels at home.
Do you visit cemeteries? Do you find any comfort there, whether or not your baby is buried in one? Are there other places where your sorrow feels at home, places outside your home where you can be at present with your grief?
