We had an appointment at the funeral home today. Good news, we did not see hide nor hair of the lady I spoke with on the phone. Lucky for her.
It was pretty much uneventful. I mean, the guy was very obviously stumbling through everything because he was uncomfortable but at least he didn’t say anything incredibly stupid. Well, maybe he did. He had spoken with the general manager about opening Felix’s grave to put the boys in there together and got approval for that. But we had already purchased a plot for Gabriel and upon mentioning that he said that we could just save it for someone else. WHAT?! I really hope we don’t EVER have the need for another grave! After I told him that he said we could use it for mom or dad or donate it to someone. Okay, the donating makes sense. Keeping one grave for one of our parents does not since both of our parents are still married to each other. (What do you suggest we do, have a drawing?) I am really trying to believe that he was so taken aback by our situation that he just had no idea what was coming out of his mouth.
I’m not sure if I was playing Egyptian (floating in DENIAL) or if it was true peace but the whole time we were there I just felt like “Thanks for the info but we’re not going to need it.” It was nice to be far from emotional this time around.
That being said I feel good about having all of the paperwork and decisions made now just in case we do need it. All we have to do is make a phone call and they can take care of the rest.
Here’s hoping we don’t need to make the call!
We didnt have to make funeral arrangements until after our children were born. I remember, with Nicholas, we had no idea what to do. The hospital chaplain went online and printed a list of funeral homes and crematories in our area. We narrowed it to the town closest and then just randomly picked. It turns out that this funeral home is family run and had worked with several of our friends (we didnt know this at the time). The owner was so kind to us. I remember that we bought the tiniest marble box for Nicholas, in the hopes that we would never need to add another child to it. When Sophia joined her twin brother 2 weeks later in our arms and then in heaven, the funeral director was so kind that he told us we could “upgrade” to the next size and never even charged us the difference. He told us we could keep the small one as a reminder, if we wanted, but we opted to donate it back to him. After cleaning it, he said that it would be donated to a family who couldnt afford to purchase one for their baby. (If a family cannot pay, he will cremate the child and donate an urn.) It always gave me a warm thought inside that Nicholas’s first box would be of help to another family. After Alexander died, I was really glad that the current marble box was big enough so that we didnt have to worry about picking out something else, etc. for all three of them.
Like you, it will be too soon whenever that box is opened again… I pray that it isnt for many, many decades, when Peter and I are uber-old and it is being opened for us…