South Bay residents relive the moment every day, in different ways

I am feeling this day, these thousands of murder victims, and remembering my own daughter, a murder victim. I will go to her grave today, stand silent for one minute, cry. Then i will gather up my boys, my little 10-year-old son and my 5 and 4-year-old grandsons, pile them into the car, and go on with this life.

Bless all of the victims and their grieving loved ones. amen


....later

i took the boys as promised but, as I stood there preparing Rory, Micah, and myself for one minute of silence, i could not HELP but notice that a workman or workwoman had left a clear imprint of his or her workboot on Bekah's face.

So much for silence. I've not been entirely happy with Green Hills, where Bekah is buried. For one thing they sold both of the plots next to Bekah. I had dibbs on the east plot but only one person knew it, and now another person lies at rest in what i had come to consider "my grave." So then i thought i might go ahead and be placed to the west of Bekah, though it was not my desire to swamp her view of the bridge [i know! i know! we'll be dead, we really won't even be there. i never knew til Bekah died that i would be so devoted to the cemetery, but i am]. They sold that plot too. I may get it anyway, but not without at least $50/month...

so basically, when i die they're going to have to dig Bekah's bones up, put mine under her, and put her bones on top of mine. I must be on the bottom.

part of me knows this is all pretty gratuitous. I've never even seen my father's grave, in a veteran's cemetery in Oregon. My mom is cremated and her ashes long since given to the Pacific...but when my little girl died I found that being near her bones was more important to me than my bones will be after i die. I don't doubt that my visits to the cemetery mean more to me than to Bekah, even, but at any rate. It is a source of comfort for me.

So the next complaint: someone has apparently decided that because it makes mowing the lawn simpler for the groundspeople, vases will be placed as close to the headstone as possible. the result of this ill-advised policy in Bekah's case is that if she has flowers, visitors are unable to view her headstone. TOTALLY unacceptable.

I made a work order to have it moved back, but the salesman subsequently informed me that rather than place bekah's vase a reasonable distance from her headstone, the plan was to move every vase in the cemetery to within an inch or two of every headstone. So they would not do it....I took my little shovel to the cemetery last week and moved her vase myself.
- posted by barbara @ 9/11/2002 01:13:00 PM