It seems like forever ago and just yesterday that we buried our baby boy. But, in reality his yahrzeit is coming up, which means that we’re approaching 12 months after he died. It’s a somber reminder of how life moves on, but part of you and the past remain anchored together.
Last week, my wife and I ordered the headstone for our son’s grave. The unveiling, a Jewish custom, is a month away, and yet I feel like it’s only around the corner. The act of designing his headstone and seeing his name on it has hit me to the core. I’ve been transported back to that awful day and those terrible weeks which preceded the death of my son. An inability to sleep, a sorrowful heart, frustration at the world, and anger with God plague me again.
It’s the dumbest and least meaningful thing in the world, but I keep on looking at my son’s middle name, Jack, and thinking he’s the last in my family line to ever be named that. His middle name came from my Grandfather, whose birth name was John, but everyone called him Jack. Sure, we might have never called him Jack (although my plan was to call him that and through attrition make it his nom de plume), but his middle name was a derivative of my middle name, which like my Grandfather’s is John.
Yet, I know the name is what I have focused on because it’s easier to think about that than holding my baby, stepping down into his grave, and laying him to rest. It’s easier to think about a family name lost than it is all of the dreams I had for him. It’s easier to think about that name, because in death he’s Bennett and I can’t say Bennett without tears coming to my eyes.
Last night was the first night of Hanukkah. After a day of cooking, spinning the dreidel with my nieces and nephews, and enjoying the time with part of my family, I laid down in what would have been my son’s room, wrapped myself in the baby blanket that my mom bought Bennett and cried. That night was the culmination of the heart wrenching loss, because I would never spin a dreidel with him, I’d never get him on my side that Texas smoked brisket is a perfect alternative to “Jewish” brisket, I would never get to teach him about his history, and I would never see his joy upon opening a present.
When we were at our son’s grave earlier in the year, the nice family who allowed our son to be buried next to their son, met with us and told us about their son who died too soon. His mother told us, “You never get over the loss of a child.” I know she didn’t say it to be mean. She said it because she knew that we needed to hear it. We needed to know that the grieving process that we were going through is normal and that every year around Bennett’s death the immense pain would resurface.
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