Originally published on For Me For Once

Jackson will be two soon. Samantha will be five in January. They are
the brightest parts of my life (along with my husband), and I can’t
remember my life without them. But I CAN, and do, remember being
pregnant with both of them. The time that I carried each of them was
sweet, fun, exciting, depressing, painful, overwhelming, scary,
life-changing and meaningful, all at once. Some days I look back on my
pregnancies with each of them and think “Dear God, how did I do that
twice?” and at other moments I wonder why everyone doesn’t have twelve.
For some reason I’m thinking a lot lately about being pregnant, or
rather NOT being pregnant, and how I feel about that, and I’ll tell you
why. (NO, it’s not because I am pregnant, so you can leave that thought
by the side of the road. Seriously. No seriously, knock it off – I am
NOT pregnant again. Fine, whatever. Think what you want.)

Here’s
why. Right now, Jackson is the age that Samantha was when we conceived
him. Just a couple of months before she turned two, we decided it might
be nice to give her a sibling fairly soon. I had always wanted my kids
to be two to three years apart, and I’m not even sure why. Part of me
wanted one child to be at least close to being out of diapers before
the next came along. Part of me wanted one who could at least bring me
a diaper for the other, if not actually change it. For some reason it
all seemed to center around diapers. That’s kind of jacked up, now that
I think about it. Hmm. Surely there must have been other reasons.

Whatever.
Regardless, we wanted them two to three years apart. And by “we” I mean
“me-and-Greg-who-showed-up-when-I-asked-him-to-with-sperm-at-the-ready”.

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Originally published on Loralee’s Looney Tunes

I visited my son’s grave today.

There was no special reason. No holiday or anniversary. No family or friends that live far away who wanted to pay their respects. I was just driving and saw the snow on the ground and wanted to check on my son, clean up his grave, and remove the decorations that I put up for Autumn.

Matthew is buried in a beautiful spot. We put him next to family, a cousin of Jonathan’s that was killed in a car crash with his grandmother when she was only 19. It makes me feel better that his cousin is close by. I will be buried near him, but not next to him because that space was occupied, which makes me very sad.

It used to make me angry.

The grave right next to my son is occupied by what they call a “Pauper grave”. Meaning, that the plot was donated and the family doesn’t have the resources for a headstone. There is a metal marker that has an index card with typing on it. The womans name has been obliterated. All I know is that death occurred in July of 1998 and that she was only 41 at the time of passing.

In the four years since my Little Bug has passed, my feelings about “Her” have changed. It’s still hard to know that this stranger gets a place that I yearn to have, but instead of being angry, I began to be curious about this neighbor of my son. Who was she? What was she like? Did she have any family?

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