Today would have been Jason's 25th birthday. Mike and I went to the cemetary before returning to SJ this past weekend. The tears still come so easily, my arms still ache to hold him close.
TJei was with us when we visited the cemetary. She normally does really well with the relationship thing - in fact, I've been impressed on many occassions that she seems to make the associations so readily. She knows, for example, her mom is my daughter. Her Tio Quentin is my son and her mom's brother. She knows Baylee is her cousin and Mia is her sister. For Jason, she isn't yet able to associate the name with a person. She sees the little etched outline of a young child on his headstone. She thinks that outline of a child is my son.
When we went across to Scotty and Billie's gravesite, TJei wandered off and ended up quite a distance away. As we tried to call her back and did the typical "okay, we're going without you" routine, she got quite upset. As I coaxed her back and tried to figure out why she was still crying hard as she got nearer and nearer to us it finally dawned on me what she was saying and what her thoughts were. We had told TJei we were going to great-grandpa's grave. The last she had known, great-grandpa was in his "box" (coffin) there at the cemetary. She was happily running around looking for great-grandpa's box!
After showing TJei the outline of the soil, still showing signs of fresh digging, and explaining that great-grandpa's box was buried in the ground and reminding her that he was in heaven, with Jesus, and it was just his body in the box, she was okay with that. I was really impressed with how eager she had been to find her great-grandpa's box as she ran down the row, further and further away from Mike and I with no hesitation at all. She had held that vision of his funeral and knew what his box would look like.
