This post is part of Carly Marie's Capture Your Grief.
Do you have a special place that you visit to be with your children? A place that you feel connected to? Maybe it is their grave, or a beautiful garden, beach or forest. Maybe it is a special spot dedicated to them in your home, like a shrine or altar. What does this place mean to you? Why that place?
I don't have a special place to go so I can feel connected to my kids. In our first house we had a fireplace with a very large mantle. We filled that mantle with many, many memorial items: figurines, stuffed animals, photo album, baby book. Then we moved. At our second house, we had a mantle, but it was a lot smaller than what we had, so not everything even got unpacked. Now, in our third house, we have no fireplace and no mantle, so we have even less out than we did before. Because Lucy is the age she is, we can't have anything within her reach, so even the stuffed animals are not out in the living room, but instead in our bedroom, which is where we moved them hastily to keep her from taking them and chomping on them.
The park by the zoo used to feel special to me, but only three of our kids names are on the memorial benches; Firefly is not. So, while I can go there and see three of the names, there is still someone missing. Also, it's a park, and sometimes the families that are there don't know the significance of the benches, so it's hard for me to ask them to get off the benches so I can visit my kids.
So, right now I don't have a sacred physical space just for them. I try to think of Oscar, Bella, Tittle and Firefly throughout the day. I know that as Lucy gets older we'll be able to buy a shelf or curio and bring out all of the things we used to have on our mantles, but just not yet. I know that I can visit them any time I want by just thinking of them, so perhaps I'm their sacred space.
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