Cemetaries

My usual post therapy routine (yes mental type and I think everyone should go) is to stop by the cemetery and give Jimmy a visit. I think I started it because so much of therapy surrounded his death for so long. Now it's more about allowing myself a moment to clear my head. I find cemetaries so peaceful. It's one of the rare places where I feel closer to God. Being there gives me a sense of comfort and clarity about life. It's about the people that are there. Those that have been put to rest and those who come to visit.  I think about how each stone has its own story. I wonder how they lived, how they filled their time, who they affected in life - no matter its length. And I think about the people who come to visit. So much emotion comes with them. Even in the sadness of the burial there is something beautiful about realizing how precious  and unpredictable life is. It challenges a person's thought about not only the person who passed, but how one feels about life and death itself. It provides a small moment of clarity about who we are when we attend the burial of a loved one. Those that visit later bring with them emotions as well. A place they can think fondly of the person who affected them. Perhaps a visit like mine where you try and channel some heavenly connection to help process life's problems and celebrate life's milestones. Residual emotional energy, at least for me, floats around and connects me to human nature and faith.

     Obviously my weekly visits are very much about connecting somehow to Jimmy. I know it may just be some made up connection I still feel with him. Something to make myself feel better about his loss. Regardless, I choose to believe in it, because there is no harm in what it provides for me. My faith gives me reason to believe that it's possible to connect on some internal or emotional level with those that leave. My God allows us to have some peace with it  despite not having all the answers about life. Today I couldn't help but think about how Jimmy left just when he was supposed to. It's hard to say as I know I'd give anything to have him here. But it some ways it just fits now that the heavy grief has passed. I never could imagine him as a "grown up". I couldn't, as hard as I tried, make a prediction on what he'd do in life, if he'd get married, have kids...  And I thought about how he was the one normal family member to me, all that he was that made me love  him so much, everything he gave to people in life, and what he's "given" in his death.  Although I feel like I lost the one person in my family I could trust fully (thus far) and grieve about the loss of that...I wondered today if his early death was a gift in that realm. I can not be sure that we'd always stay so close. It's certainly possible we would have grown apart, that he or I would have caused some sort of fight that broke down our trust. That didn't happen, instead he died at a time where all his wonderfulness was at a peak. He left at a time where his life left me and hundreds of others with a great sense of fondness and love for him. I'd be so lucky to have affected so many people. So now he will always be that person to me. He will always be the one family member I'm close to. That's a gift, however twisted it may sound.