Friday

We buried Hawk on Friday morning. It was a hard morning. Maybe not as hard as we had expected though. The funeral went a little different than we were originally told. We were told that we could see him at the mortuary and that we could carry his casket from the car to his site. Those things didn't happen. When we went to place some flowers at his site before the funeral, Hawk was already there. I wasn't ready for that. The funeral director advised us not to see him again. We were okay with this because we really do want to remember him as he was at the hospital after he was born. We are so glad that we did get to see him again that Tuesday. It would have been devastating without that second time to see him and talk to him. We were able to place the book, Goodnight Moon, 3 family pictures (Copper hugging Melvin; Mexico pic of Copper, Aubrey, and I at Tulum; and Aubrey and I holding Hawk at the hospital), and Copper's Beanie Baby Brobee in his casket. We didn't get to be alone with him. We had to share the moment with the funeral director and grave worker standing nearby. It was weird and threw us for a bit of a loop. It's not easy to have plans change for this kind of event. We were mentally prepared for one thing and something different happened. Somehow we managed to roll with it. Copper enjoyed walking around and looking at all the flowers, toys, and gifts that were left at all the other graves around us. Everyone arrived at 11:00. My family: Mom, Dad, Derek, Lisa, Lucy, Drew, and Lia; Aubrey's Mom, his sister Rian, and her son Kai; my mom's good friend Trish; my friends Kellie and Jay and Shelly and Shawn. Shortly after, my mom read a poem. It was hard to hear, but felt so good to hear it. Then Aubrey and I covered his little casket with Aubrey's baby blanket and we watched as he was lowered into the ground and the vault was sealed. Then we left.

We came back later that day to pick up all of the flowers so they wouldn't wilt in the cold night air and to place a ridiculously large pinwheel at his site. This next part kind of cracks me up, but it really made Aubrey mad...When we let Melvin out of the car, he immediately peed on some flowers in the first row and then bee lined to Hawk's flowers and peed on them. I think it's funny/ironic because we chose Hawk's site to minimize the possibility of dog's peeing on his stuff and it turns out that Melvin was probably the first dog to do it.

Yesterday was Saturday. I didn't cry all day. Aubrey, Copper, and I went to Hawk's site to bring him the flowers from Friday and I actually smiled as we pulled up. The oversized orange and white polka dotted pinwheel made me smile. When I walked up to the site, I noticed that a certain someone wrote "Grandma Strong" in the dirt. That made me smile too.

The cemetery has always been a relaxing and serene place for me. Aubrey and I both enjoy visiting other cemeteries when we travel. Even though our tiny baby boy is buried here, it is still a calm place for me.

I think about Hawk all the time. But now it's not with a sense of dread of the shitty things that we had to do all week. Now I look forward to visiting him at the cemetery. There is something about having him buried that has given me a sense of peace about this whole situation. The "calm" moments now outweigh the downs.