I’ve been going to the cemetery regularly now for over a year. Four times now I have gone to find a new little neighbor near Raphael.
The cemetery buries babies under two whose families don’t have a family “plot” in a special section near a standing Angel. Babies are buried in chronological order, so if you can figure out the order, and know when a baby died, you can find him/her without too much difficulty as long as they have a headstone. They don’t bury them all in a straight line however. There are five across in a section, and then they move to the next line. In other words, the line of graves closest to the angel has babies from 70s, 80s, and 90s next to it, but only 5 or 6 of each. When 5 graves fill a section, they move back to the next line.
Raphael this year was in the newest section of graves. In fact he started that section. He was only the new kid for 9 days before the next baby came, a little stillborn term baby from a family we knew casually as our kids had played on the same T-ball teams in the past. I had heard of his death on my E-mail loop so I was prepared for it.
There were no more baby deaths last winter but I knew it was only a matter of time before the next spot would be taken and in the spring I would hold my breath as I turned that corner towards the angel. I didn’t’ know how I would feel when I saw a new grave there.
In the spring, there it was, a newly dug grave with a funeral bouquet on it. I didn’t feel overwhelmed as I thought I would. I felt curious. Who was this baby? Was it a boy or a girl (although I supposed a girl because of all the pink flowers). What happened? Was there an obituary?
Had to wait for the cemetery to put down the temporary plastic cross to answer some of those questions but as luck would have it, this baby was of Indian heritage, with no obituary so I would have to wait longer to figure out if this was a girl’s name or boy’s. Two more babies came that spring and early summer in quick succession and filled up our line. Little girls, both with obituaries on line so I could read a bit about them, if they had siblings, what parish they were being buried from etc. I just liked knowing.
There were no deaths this summer, or fall. Raphael’s anniversary came and went with no more new little graves. We heard of a family in our parish who had a baby die after birth and I watched for that grave, but they must have buried that child somewhere else or in a family grave plot.
In December though I made up my mind that there shouldn’t be any more deaths this year. It was too close to Christmas, too cold, wouldn’t be right. But they don’t ask me about these things.. sigh.
Last week there was a new grave, and it went in the new line right in front of Raphael. Again the name was a little ambiguous and so was the obituary. Still don’t know if it was a little boy or girl. I do know this baby died after birth, and from the picture in the obituary, that it was a beautiful baby.
So now Raphael is no longer even in the “new kid” line. This new line will fill up this year and by next year he will be two lines back – an old timer. I have feelings about that but they are hard to express. I wish there could be no more graves in babyland. I wish babies didn’t die, but they do. I guess my strongest feeling is that I don’t want my baby’s grave to go unnoticed, to be uncared for, I don’t want my children to forget their brother, and as more and more lines fill up, I don’t want them to forget where he lays.