It was October that I requested a bid from a monument design company in Texas that specialized in Celtic Crosses. Three months had passed, and seemed to have been only a couple of horror-filled days. Shock does strange things to time. It slows it down and speeds it up simultaneously. The days dragged individually, every moment a dreadful task to get through, every breath a conscious raising of your chest that is resented passionately...for why should you draw breath, when she could not? Each day seemed endless, and yet they piled up on top of each other until you could scarcely believe it had been 30 days since you'd last seen your child's face...or 60....0r 90.
I set out to find a monument company that would design and build exactly what I asked for. I knew that Cory's stone had to be special, and different than the others...there was no one like her in the world. I spent those first few days wandering the cemetery grounds, sometimes with Jake, sometimes alone, and on one memorable occasion in the pouring rain. I examined all the different stones, intrigued with the ones in the oldest section. They told stories if you stopped to listen. That's what I wanted for my girl. I wanted something tall and slim, as she had been. I wanted something as high and close to heaven as I could afford. I wanted something old-fashioned looking because that was Cory's style. In the end, I found just such a company, and sent them a sketch of just what I wanted. They replied they could do just what I wanted. It would be expensive, but it would also be the very last permanent object I would buy my child. Now was not the time to cut corners. When the monument man said each piece was one of a kind, and his goal was to have someone decades later walk by and admire it, thinking to themselves, "Someone has left a piece of art out here." I was sold. They send out a purchase agreement, and then things got really, really difficult.
It started with the frost line wars between the cemetery manager and the monument man. There were measurements, specs, requirements, and the like. I slumped down a little more with each new request and disagreement. I had barely got through the surreal experience of sketching my nineteen year old daughter's gravestone. I couldn't do much more. Tim had checked out for this piece of business, likely recovering from all he'd had to do in the frantic days following the accident. I remember at one point, just yelling o myself tas I drove in my car..."How fricking hard is it to buy your kid a gravestone?"
I remember thinking it would be easier to purchase a gun...and actually, at that point, it didn't seem like such a bad idea. Why had I ever been against firearms in the home?
So as "discussions" took place between the cemetery manager and the monument man, I quietly bowed out of the game. I stopped following up, and I stopped returning calls. I did nothing more to facillitate the purchase. I was "all done".
Looking back, I can see that as the technicalities may have made things more involved, the truth was I just wasn't ready to take that step. As I've said, words mean everything to me. To put her name and her dates on a six foot piece of stone was to say to the world, "yes, she'd dead and I'll never see her face again." I wasn't ready for that.
So that purchase agreement sat in the dining room for the next seven months. At the tail end of that period, my mom began asking me if I'd ordered, when was I planning to order it, did I need help to order it, and hurry up, or it won't be up in time for Memorial Day. I could feel my nerves stretching out taut like piano wire every time she inquired. I was not ready. I just wasn't. I remember thinking to myself, come on, people, just let my denial run its course.
It so many ways, I still did not believe Cory was actually gone. Permanently. Despite what I had seen, despite the nighmares and flashbacks that plagued me daily, my brain held fast to silly notions. Cory is at an extra long sleep over. She'll be home any day now.
Cory's in the mental hospital again. She's getting better.
Cory's browsing books at Barnes and Noble. If I look carefully enough, over every square inch of that place, I will find her.
To put up the monument would be to squash all those desperate hopes and dreams. It was as final as final could get. I wasn't ready to buy the last thing I'd ever give her.
I wasn't ready for her to be dead.
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