Shopping

I haven't allowed myself to think about it, but I can't put it off much longer.  I need to shop for a grave stone.

How the hell am I supposed to do that?  Brian and I never talked about it.  I don't know what he would have wanted, so I have to do this on my own.

The cemetery requires that the stone be flush with the ground with no more than a few inch rise.  I hate that.  The family plots back on the East Coast have raised stones.  They rise up over the ground.  These flush stones make you focus down - instead of the freed soul, one focuses on the ground and the buried remains.

Most of the stones in our section of the cemetery are simple with little more than names and dates.  They are small.  Many, if not most, are flat double stones.

I don't know what to do.  I don't know what to order.  I don't want Brian's life reduced to a name and date range.  I want the stone to speak of him and of our love.

I also don't know whether or not to get a double stone including my name.  Many people have advised me not to do that.  They think it would be disconcerting to see my own name on the stone.  I think they don't want me to include me on the stone because I'm relatively young and maybe someday I'll entertain another relationship.  I can't process that.  No matter what might happen years from now, Brian was my husband, the love of my life.  Not putting my name on the stone would almost feel like abandoning Brian.

This is horrible.  There is no instruction sheet, and there is no right and wrong.  I don't know what Brian thought about the stone - we thought we had decades more together, and when we knew we didn't we didn't waste precious time planning for time without Brian.

So I visited his grave today, and then I went to the memorial store to explore my options.  I honestly don't know what stone I'll choose or what inscription I'll have engraved.  I just don't know what to do, but I know that I'll need to decide soon.

This is like adding insult to injury.  This is so unthinkable.