Mom said she wanted to be cremated and scattered on a dune in coastal North Carolina. We scattered most of her there and of course, the sand dune is now part of the Atlantic Ocean. My sister arranged for a bit of the cremains to be buried in Alabama where Mom’s family is from and installed a very touching, memorial marker in remembrance.
On Christmas Eve day, we traveled to Alabama to visit Mom’s family; both living and dead. My main mission for the trip was to engage my 8-year-old niece in getting to know Mom, the grandmother she never knew, and Meme and Pop, my grandparents. How do you make a visit to the cemetery fun for an 8-year-old?
I took some cues from my super-smart grief specialist friends at Kate’s Club. I thought about our holiday traditions – what would be a fun tradition to bring to the cemetery? Food and photos came to mind. My sister came up with the food solution – CHOCOLATE! For Christmas, Pop always gave Meme a box of Russell Stover chocolates – the kind with descriptions of each chocolate so you can avoid that yucky raspberry one. For photos, I flipped through the first half of a large photo album and pulled the Mom, Meme, and Pop photos I liked. My sister pulled pictures from the second half of the album. We put them in a fancy velvet bag (very mysterious for an 8-year-old).
At the cemetery, we found the markers for Mom, Meme, and Pop and we ate chocolates and reminisced. My niece patiently pulled photos out of the bag, one at a time, and listened to stories (she also laughed at the great 80’s fashions – remember neon and tightly rolled jeans? Wait, I think that’s trendy again).
I won’t lie, it was hard for me – even 10 years after Mom’s death. But it was SO WORTH IT! I knew it was a success when I heard my niece telling a relative that we had fun eating chocolates and telling stories at the cemetery earlier that day. Mission accomplished!!!
Would you like to share your story? Please get in touch with Kate's Club! KC has free grief support with grief resources, grief counseling resources, grief training, and volunteer work in Atlanta and surrounding places in Georgia. Kate's Club is a growing nonprofit in Atlanta with grief specialists for kids and young adults going through bereavement. Our goal is to make a world where it is okay to grieve.