Dealing With Loss at the Graveside
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
Personal Story About Dealing With Loss At My Brother’s Graveside
The following post is a story that I wrote about what transpired at my brother’s graveside. This story was published through Phi Theta Kappa, but I have the rights to share it. I hope that this will touch the hearts of those who have lost a loved one. Before you begin reading the story picture if you will a graveyard in the fall full of leaves with one lonely chair sitting in the middle with headstones for as far as you can see. This was the picture that gave me the inspiration to write this story, this true story.
Shane’s Graveside
Here I sit day after day staring at his headstone. I can’t seem to wrap y head around the fact that he is really gone. I will never see his smile again; hear his infectious laughter or listen to the jokes that he would tell that would cause me to laugh until I cried.
Awe, here it is again…that breeze that blows every time I come here to talk to him. Somehow I find comfort in that breeze and in a few minutes a lowly bird will fly by. Even though he has been gone for many years it still happens every time I come. I watch tat bird fly until I can’t see it any more. I use to do that when he would get on his motorcycle; I would watch him ride away until I couldn’t see him anymore.
I know that he is not really here, only his body is lying in this grave but this is the last place that I had a connection with him. So I am here again today to share with him all that is weighing upon my heart, all the successes that I am experiencing in my life. I have sat in this chair many times, sharing the birth of my daughter (Shalyn, who was named after him) and then eighteen years later I came and shared with him that she was getting married to a wonderful young man named Matt, who had the same artistic talent that he had had. I said to him that I still have the last piece of art work that he had done for me and the first piece that my son in law had drawn for me. I came to say goodbye when I moved to New York and then I almost ran to his gravesite to tell him I had come home when we moved back. four years ago I sat at his grave as the tears streamed down my face as I told him that I had cancer and wondered if I would be seeing him soon; then it happened in that very moment. The breeze that has become so familiar began to stir and it felt like it wrapped its arms around me and in that moment I knew that everything was going to be okay, that my time here on this earth was not yet over, my work was not yet finished. In a few months I will again go sit in that chair and look at his headstone and tell him that it has been five years and I am still cancer fee and that next spring I will be graduating from college at the age of fifty-two and that when I walk I will be carrying a picture of him with me so that he can share in that amazing day with me.
I had lost contact with his widow a few years after he was gone, but a year ago we connected once again. I drove to his gravesite and sat by his grave and shard with him the conversation that I had, had with her, know that he would be pleased that she had gone on with her life and was happy. He would have wanted that for her. If he could truly hear me he would know that I keep him up to date on all that is going on in all of our lives.
When I sit at his gravesite everything else in the world disappears and we are there alone. I place a penny upon his headstone because he hated pennies; he was forever taking them out of his pocket and throwing them on the floor of his bedroom, so it is our way of joking with him. I usually bring a rose and place it upon the ground knowing that his body is laying there beneath bringing some beauty in to an otherwise very desolate place.
i cam a few days after my granddaughter was born to share with him how much she had already added to our lives and I share with him as often as I can how much she adds to our lives. I have sat in that chair and told him about her smile that reaches all the way up into her eyes and how my heart melts every time she calls me Nana and when she hugs me everything in the world rights itself. he would have loved this little girl and spoiled her rotten. I hate that he has to miss our on so much that is so right in our lives.
I come to the graveside when the grass is green and the flowers are blooming, when the leaves are turning and falling to the ground and I brush them from his gravesite and somehow that makes e feel closer to him. Our family has come to his gravesite on Christmas Eve and we place a tree on his grave and turn on the lights and then we stand around lost in our own thoughts remembering special times that we have shared with him. We always remember the last Christmas that we spent with him. I especially come on his birthday realizing that I still picture him as he was when he was twenty-one years old, even though he would be forty-seven now. He will be forever young in my heart; he will always be my big little brother. When times are hard I remember his smile and all that is hidden behind that smile I will remember the joy that he brought to our live and I will hang onto the hope that I have of seeing him again when I leave this world and go home. In his life he gave much to many but in his death he gave much to my life. I have been forever changed and I know that he would die again to know how much my life has changed.
The End
So much more has transpired since this story was published that I am thinking of writing another. When I do you will see it here. I hope this has helped some of you that are grieving the loss of someone who was very dear to your heart.