I'm guessing that many of you expecting me to write yesterday or tomorrow about Easter and how I feel about it and what it means. Today, a month after Joel died, and in between Good Friday and Easter, this seems appropriate. So Easter will come in here. There are just so many things I want to say, that this might end up more of a jumble than anything coherent.
I'm glad the closest holiday to Joel's death was Easter. It is the one holiday that does not really feel somewhat "tainted" by Joel's death. I know that they will be hard days, Mother's Day, and my birthday, and Thanksgiving and Christmas. But Easter seems better, even though the simple fact that it is now April 23rd has reduced me to tears.
It seems better, because now Easter has another special joy attached to it. Yes, a joy. Even in the pain and sadness. I feel a special joy at this holiday because I think of Jesus, in his resurrected body, eating fish and inviting his disciples to touch him and see he is "real" and not at ghost. And I think of Joel, seeing him too one day in his new body. Easter encapsulates the year long celebration I have. I'm just celebrating a future day.
Like a bride, looking forward to her wedding day. That's me. Looking forward to a special day in the future. And Easter is a special holiday because of this. I should be remembering and celebrating the Resurrection every day. And I try to. But there is something very good and special about a whole weekend to do this...
On the other hand, it seems to me appropriate to write about Easter today, the Saturday between Jesus' death and Resurrection. Because that is where I am at with Joel. I am between pain and sadness, and the realization of my hope. I'm in the day "between." I have certainty, but I also have sadness. A good day is coming, but it is not here yet. This is where I am at, on this day one month after Joel is gone.
Since this morning was so nice, and tomorrow afternoon has given no such guarantee, we went out to Joel's grave this morning. That seemed, once again, somehow appropriate. We brought out a few more solar lights (a matched set of four to replace the two I had previously set out). They are very pretty. We brought out a lovely metal butterfly, yellow and green, on a stake so that it can be seen from afar. And we also had a wrought metal stake to hang up a very pretty hummingbird feeder. I don't know if we'll manage hummingbirds there or not, but the feeder is so pretty. It is a blue, blown glass globe. And we put out the little gray "stepping stone" with a letter "J" raised on it.
I forgot to bring a camera, but I will next time. Even with the bare dirt, it looked really pretty. Because it looked like the start of a garden. Which is it.
I'm going to make it a little miniature garden. Once there are bright flowers surrounding the stepping stone, it will look so amazing. I'm going to plant a lot of petunias in the hopes of hummingbirds, which, if you remember a previous blog, are very special to me. I can't wait. But I must, because the grave hasn't settled yet, and once it does the cemetery will put some good topsoil on top for me. And I'm going to plant the whole thing with flowers. You betcha. And then I'll put a picture up, to show you.
I know Joel isn't there. I don't really know what he is aware of in heaven, if he can actually "see" what I have done from the plane or dimension of existence he is in how. But that doesn't matter. I'm not so much trying to do it "for him," as I am just doing it as a remembrance OF HIM.
Maybe it seems odd, but I don't find the cemetery a really sad place, though of course, I always cry when I'm there, because Joel is not with me. Graves really are connected in my mind AND heart, with the grave that Jesus walked out of. And that connection makes Joel's grave a lot different that just a place where we put his body when his life was over.
And the cemetery where Joel's body lies is a pretty, little, simple, country cemetery. There are geese honking. And birds singing. And frogs peeping now, in the spring. There will be a garden on his grave. Just like the garden in my heart. A garden where "dead" seeds have come to life, and flowers bloom. And when I'm there I'll be always remembering that the Resurrection is coming. It's a remembering place, and a hoping place. And oddly, though it makes me cry, I like to go there. It is peaceful, and hopeful, and love-ful, and joyful.
And now, please humour me. I find I just have this yearning to share my pictures of Joel, now that they are all I have of him. So I think after each blog, I'm just going to tack on a picture. Just because.
Ok, maybe three pictures. Happy Easter! He is risen! He is risen, indeed!
This may sound like a rather strange comment but when you mentioned Joel possibly looking down from heaven I suddenly remembered a dream that I had after my mother died. Mum didn't believe in an afterlife: in her opinion, when you died that was it. End of story. I am a committed Christian and didn't share her opinion. Anyway, in this dream, my mother appeared to me and she said two things:
ReplyDelete1) You were right.
2) There are a lot of babies here.
I took comfort in the first statement but always wondered about the second. What did she mean? Anyway . . . That's the first time I have thought of that in quite awhile.And, truth to tell, I always used to feel that my parents (my Dad died when I was young) were looking down at me after that.