Finding joy in the graveyard

Last Sunday marked the fifth anniversary of the day that my beloved's mother passed away. It has always been a strange and melancholy time for our family because it is the day before my beloved's birthday. And five years ago, as Jan was in her last days, my beloved and I met. His heart was raw and pure and wide open, and even within those first few days of knowing one another I held his hand as he chose a burial site and coffin and the clothes in which his mother would be laid to rest. We chose readings and flowers for the funeral together. We were, in a way, forged in his grief. It made everything about our relationship more powerful and in some ways much more difficult as the days passed and those first intense weeks of love and pain became the exhaustion of interminable loss.

Now, five years on, we have made our love our own, not marked by the wounds of either of our histories (as much as we are humanly able to do so). And so this year as the anniversary loomed I felt strongly that I wanted us to make memories for our children, for our family, and somehow keep Jan in all of our hearts.

Jan grew up in Sale in country Victoria and that is where she is laid to rest. So on Saturday we packed the boys in the Tarago and made the 3 hour trek eastward almost to the edge of Australia. We found an Austrian themed motel that hadn't been updated in 20 years or more but was clean and friendly and we determined to explore the countryside as well as to pay our respects.

On Saturday we hiked along the beach in the cold, autumnal sunshine and in the evening we ate schnitzel and strudel prepared by our Austrian host. On Sunday we went to a market and bought daffodil bulbs and pink buns to take to the grave site. We drove right up to the big tree at the back of the graveyard, the spot my beloved chose with such care as the place to give his mother to the earth, and we planted bulbs and sang songs and ate buns and stifled laughter as Finn did his best zombie impression.

And my beloved carried his new baby son to Jan's headstone and introduced grandmother to grandchild. And we cried quietly, fleetingly, as Luka waved his little arms in apparent recognition.

In the afternoon we walked in the dazzling sunshine through the wetlands to shake off the ghosts. We took Finn for a final scoot at the skate park. And then we made our way home. It was more than I could have hoped for. We began to build something on the bones of loss, and from them something wonderful has started to grow. Daffodils, yes, but so much more.