Stone

We are choosing granite options. I think we have a design figured out for Joseph’s stone. But there’s something meaningful in choosing stones today, the six-month anniversary of losing Joseph. Like we’re giving the tragedy a stamp of permanence.

How have I managed to keep going? It’s rhetorical. I’m asking myself. Because I really don’t know.

I thought the hardest moments were the leaving. Physically being wheeled away from Joseph in the hospital. Walking back to the car at the cemetery. But the hardest moments might be how insufferably normal everything is.

Dishes. Laundry. Balancing the checkbook. Scheduling Cee’s next MRI.

It should all be different. Instead it’s the same as it always was.

But *I* am not the same.

Maybe that’s what makes the choosing of the granite so hard. No stone can convey the impact Joseph has had. How he has changed our family.

Yesterday Mateo wanted to go with me to the library. I sent him out to buckle himself into the van while I gathered all our books to return. (He is adamant that he buckles himself, but it takes forevvvver.)

As I opened the back door of the van to double check his work, I was surprised to see an extra car seat next to his.

He was triumphant. “Look! I put this car seat in so if we have a new baby, it could sit next to me.”

“That’s so kind! If there was a new baby, it could sit next to you,” I replied.

But there is no new baby. Not now.

Mateo is determined. That seat was big. And hoisting it up into our big conversion van would have been no small feat.

There’s something about a new baby that changes the dynamic of a family. Sure, it’s hard. Sure, there’s less sleep, less time, and less energy. But the love a baby inspires is immeasurable. The sacrifices required shapes us.

It’s the kind of love that makes it a good idea to wrestle an old car seat next to yours.

Maybe that’s why the decision is so difficult. You can’t get a stone to say that.