Processing our grief

We met with a grief counselor last week, and she gave us a few suggestions to help us get some closure on the death of our two girls.  One thing she suggested was to think of something that we could do in lieu of a funeral.  Something where we could say good-bye to them and "bury" them so to speak.  I want to share what we decided to do as a little memorial service.  Maybe this will help someone else who has either miscarried or been through the same thing we have been through.

I had started a scrapbook back in the summer to document our adoption.  I had spent hours on it.  Once we got our first referral for Baby D, I put her photos in it and information about her.  After we got our second referral, I removed the photos of Baby in order to use the book for Baby #2.  As we talked about what we should do for a memorial, James suggested we burn the scrapbook.  I had a few other photos of the girls that I had not put in it, and we decided to burn those as well.  We decided on a place to scatter the ashes.

This afternoon, we burned the photos and the whole scrapbook in our chimenea on our patio.  We placed the photos in the fire one by one and watched until the fire went out.  We listened to "Jesus Loves Me" and we prayed together.  Once the ashes had cooled, we put them in a little box and drove to the place we had decided upon to scatter them.  There was a small body of water there,  James scattered the ashes over the water, and we stood there for a moment watching them dissipate.

That was it.  Simple, just the two of us.  We never would have done that without the counselor's suggestion.  We both found it to be healing.

There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:

  a time to be born and a time to die,
  a time to plant and a time to uproot,
  a time to kill and a time to heal,
  a time to tear down and a time to build,
  a time to weep and a time to laugh,
  a time to mourn and a time to dance,

Ecclesiastes 3:1-4