This past weekend Debbie and I went to the cemetery with Christmas trees.

Once again we took small, real trees. We plan to take them and plant them somewhere later. Hopefully we’ll retrieve them before they disappear this time.

Richard's 2010 Christmas tree.

Last year Debbie made strings of cranberries to put on the trees.

Richard liked cranberries. Not that Jello looking stuff you plop out of a can, but the real deal. He and Debbie would cook up real cranberries in our big cast iron skillet. When he was young he liked to help stir the sugary berry mix and watch the cranberries pop. I think he was the only member of the family that really cared much for them – though the real thing was much better than the canned version. We had cranberries every Christmas because Richard wanted them.

Debbie also thought the birds would like the fresh berries.

Well the birds didn’t pay much attention to them, and Richard didn’t reach out and pluck any of them off the tree either. So this year she decided it wasn’t worth the work. She bought some strings of red beads and put them on the trees. There are also some small balls and ribbons.

While we were there we met another set of grieving parents, the Longs. Their son Michael Todd Long is one of Richard’s neighbors now. He died at the age of 15. That was about 13 years ago. They were there to decorate their son’s headstone.

The Long's decorate the top of their son's stone.

Like us they have parents buried close by and will join their son there some day. She told me she wasn’t in any hurry to die, but she wasn’t afraid of it either, because she knew she’d get to she her son again when it happens.

Exactly.

It’s Halloween. Richard always had a good time with Halloween.

So after church this morning we stopped in Kroger and got a couple of helium filled Mylar Halloween balloons to take to the cemetery.

It was a beautiful morning, perfectly clear sky and crisp but not too cool air.

A hundred feet or so from Richard’s grave is a small grove of trees. There are a couple of real tall trees there. As we left our car and started walking to Richard’s grave we were greeted  with birds chirping. It sounded like hundreds of them, coming from those trees. Reminded me of the old Alfred Hitchcock movie The Birds. They were just chattering up a storm.

So we were standing there holding our balloons and talking to Richard. The birds were making a racket.  We couldn’t see them, but it sounded like those trees were filled with them.

Finally we told Richard happy Halloween and Debbie and I released our balloons into the air, hoping maybe they would sail up to him in heaven.

As our fingers pulled away from the strings and the balloons started to rise into the sky – the cemetery went silent. Not a tweet. It was like the birds just vanished.

We watched the balloons rise higher and higher, until they vanished into the sun filled sky.

And the birds were still silent.

We stayed a little while longer, talking to Richard more. And the birds never made another sound. It was still quiet when we left.

That was really kind of weird.

Though it often hasn’t felt possible after Richard’s death, life does indeed go on.

Spring is when nature shows us there is hope. There is new life.

I took my camera to the cemetery this morning. Even in a place that is the focus of our pain there is also much beauty.

Hope you enjoy the pictures (click the thumbnail pictures below to see the full size image).

I guess it’s true that life goes on.

This winter has been long and cold. Really it has been cold since Richard died. I don’t remember a summer as cool as the past summer was. The grass stayed green the entire time.

And the winter bleakness has lasted very long.

But it seems life is returning.

The pansies we put at Richard’s grave last fall are blooming.

And popping up out of the hole in the ground in front of my mom’s tombstone are crocus. Their yellow blooms promise better things ahead.

We can only hope that life will return to our hearts too.

Crocus blooms pop up from the hole where one of our live Christmas trees used to be.

I don’t guess this really has that much to do with grieving, but it’s sort of amazing.

In the week before Christmas I was on vacation. Debbie wasn’t, and since she works at our church, Christmas is one of her busy seasons.

I went in to help her one morning with some stuff to get ready for the Children’s Christmas Mass. Around lunch time I was leaving to go home, but Debbie was staying on to work some more. I went to the local McDonald’s and bought some lunch for us. I left hers with her at her office and took mine.

It was a pretty nice day for late December, so I took mine to the cemetery. I sat at the garden bench my aunts and uncles bought for us and talked to Richard and my mom while eating lunch. I went over in front of Richard’s stone and told him, “Here have some french fries.” I tossed a few fries on the ground at his grave.

The picture above shows one of those french fries today.

It’s been rained on several times. It’s been covered in snow at least twice. It has been in the sun, wind and nature for a month and a half.

It’s still there.

Bleached out, but still there.

Wow.

Christmas was always a big deal to Richard. So we put out a Christmas tree at his grave and one at my mom’s grave which is located right behind Richard’s. We used live trees, intending to plant them somewhere later.

They were in pots. We just dug into the ground and buried them up to the rim of the pot.

I made a trip to the cemetery today. Where once there were Christmas trees there are now holes in the ground. The picture above is where our tree once stood.

Our cemetery has a rule against artificial decorations. They allow an exception during the Christmas season. During Christmas we are allowed to place wreathes and other artificial decorations. At the end of January the artificial decorations must be removed.

I never thought a real live tree would fall under this rule.

But it seems my definition of artificial is much different than the staff of the cemetery.

Very aggravating.

Sunday afternoon we did a little Christmas decorating at the cemetery.

There have already been many wreaths showing up. Debbie decided she wanted Richards grave to look different. So she bought a couple of small live trees. She put in a few ornaments and red bows.

Richard always insisted on cranberry sauce for Christmas. Not the store bought kind, that stuff that looks like it came out of a tin can jello mold. Nope. It had to be the real thing.

So every year Debbie bought cranberries and cooked them on the stove with sugar. This was a time consuming job requiring lots of stirring. Richard helped. Some.

So Debbie got cranberries and made strings of berries with them. We placed them on the trees.

We took these potted trees to the cemetery. I dug them in deep enough the wind shouldn’t be able to turn them over. We put one at Richard’s grave and one at my mom’s grave, which is located behind Richard.

After Christmas we’ll take them out and plant them somewhere.

Got a call last week from Mark at the cemetery.

“Someone put up a rock border around your son’s headstone.”

Well, yeah. Debbie and I spent an entire Sunday afternoon putting that there. We wanted to get it looking nice for Richard’s birthday.

It was hard work. The sod in that area of the cemetery has a tough root system. It didn’t come up easily. The ground was like concrete. We dug some of it out and added nice planting soil we got from Lowe’s.

Well, it seems rock and stone edging is against the rules. Liability issues.

So, this past weekend we went back and removed the edging stones.

For now we didn’t put in a new edging. Only wood and plastic are allowed. Didn’t see any that are pleasing to us. We added a few more flowers too.

Richard's grave with the dangerous edging removed.