It’s almost February and just about three months since Gabriel was born. After he was cremated, we intended to spread his ashes somewhere locally as a family. We wanted it to be intimate and special. Well, as special as spreading your baby’s ashes can be.
We visited a few different places but none of them felt right. So, we still have him with us in our home.
Barry came up with an idea that I loved: renting a boat, and spreading him in the gulf. I still love the idea of doing that, and it’s likely we will. At some point, anyways.
I don’t feel ready. I thought that I would. I don’t know why I thought I knew what it would be like to have some finality of the nightmare that, in the moment, felt like it would never end.
Part of the reason we made the decision to cremate Gabriel was because we move every couple of years, and we didn’t want to bury him somewhere we may never return to. While we like Florida, and feel that we will come back at some point, it’s always possible that we fall in love with another location and decide to settle there after Barry’s CG career is over. If we buried him here in Florida, that would be it. We could never live anywhere else.
Now, of course that isn’t true. We could always live elsewhere but I would always feel like we had abandoned him. If we weren’t there to visit him or his grave, I would have a hard time getting through the day. Just thinking about that makes me feel guilty.
I think that Barry wants the finality. He wants to lay Gabriel to rest in the sea and for us to continue to live our lives. I don’t know why I’m feeling so conflicted. It’s not like I think about it every single moment of every day. Whether his remains are sitting in a box in our bedroom, or scattered in the ocean shouldn’t matter, right? I haven’t even opened up the box that contains the box of his ashes. Hell, we haven’t even looked at the pictures we had taken before he passed away.
But this is part of the journey of child loss. It doesn’t make sense. If you spend all your time wondering “why”, it will consume you.
So I try not to. I just shrug and tell Barry that I’m not ready. And that’s that.