Unmarked graves

My baby doesn't get a headstone. This bothers me.

We went down to the graveyard today just to see Chase's grave site and grieve for a bit. We hadn't been back since we'd buried him. For those of you who don't know how it's done when you lose a baby this young, the babies who die before birth, or shortly thereafter are buried in one mass grave every six weeks. That's how it's done around here. They aren't given a headstone with their names. I don't understand why. I'd fork over the money for all of those babies to have their names known. The good thing is that the burial and everything is taken care of by benefactors, so it's all free. You don't have the financial burden of an unexpected funeral on top of the shock of losing a baby. But the literature from the funeral home said that they don't allow stone markers with the names of the babies on them.

I noticed today that some of the other babies grave sites had small monuments or stone markers with Bible verses on them. Mike and I are thinking of doing something like that for Chase's site. Maybe we'll work the word "chase" in there and accidentally capitalize it...I LOVE his name--we can be nice and sneaky with it.

But we get back to the issue at hand. Why can't we put their names on stone and memorialize it? Is it because abortion is still legal at 18 weeks, so he isn't really a person yet? He was born alive. He lived in this world for a few minutes. Why can't I put a stone up so people know that there was a Chase Lukens Hall on this earth? That's what makes this so hard. In a few months, no one else will remember my baby. It'll already be as if he were never here once they replace the turned up dirt with sod.

Maybe there is a valid reason for this. It said in the literature that we got that they don't do it so they can mow. But every other grave in this graveyard has an aboveground headstone. So that reason doesn't seem to fly. Maybe there's something I don't know about mowing graveyards. But it doesn't seem right to leave my very loved and much wanted baby buried in an unmarked grave.

The only way I get through this, is because I know that while his body is there, his soul is not. And I'm sure Chase is not one bit worried about not being known on earth, since he is now known in heaven. But his momma's heart sure breaks over that grave site.