Memorial Day

Rob took us out to dinner at Chilis, where we spent over an hour waiting for our food...

Still, better than having to make it and clean it all up :)

I thought I recognized a lady I'd had lunch with months ago through a mutual friend who had lost her toddler son in a similar accident to Elle's. Memorial Day was tougher than I had expected, and I wondered if it might do any good for her to not feel alone on this day. I walked around the restaurant til I found the lady, but I wasn't sure it was her, so I started back to our table. Then I remembered something.

"The most important virtue is courage, because you cannot practice any other virtue consistently without courage"
(—Maya Angelou). I turned around.

It was her. We hugged and cried, then hugged again.

She knows.

I know.

Getty's "come hither" look (and bike crash shrapnel. Why do I let him out of the house?)

(MK met us later at Elle's gravesite.)

The weather was gorgeous. I felt like spending the whole day just sitting near Elle's grave watching for all the relatives of people buried in the cemetery, knowing we all have loss in common.

I recently found a friend's 2-year-old daughter's grave just up the hill from Elle. The little girl had drowned in their hot tub. The engraving on the back of her headstone made me heartsick.

The boys went up to the very top of the hill and found graves as old as 1811. Whoa. I thought Utah was pretty much uncharted land when the pioneers arrived in 1847.
How many pioneers buried children along the way?

The kids are doing so well. I can tell they have worked through some of their grief, maybe the worst part of it.
I sure hope so.