Monument

My father called me to tell me that Sam’s monument had been erected yesterday. Sometime, in the last few days, the cemetery workers had removed the temporary white cross, and erected his beautiful granite monument. There was no ceremony, no formality. The temporary marker replaced with a formal reminder, that he is gone from this world.

My son is buried almost 5000 kms from where I live and my shattered heart is further complicated that I can’t go to sit with my son whenever I want to. I will fly out for Remembrance Day, and I will leave my poppy after the service with him, as I have done in previous years, on the Graves of my fallen comrades.

Last evening, a sunset ceremony of remembrance was observed closer to home, at the Veterans Cemetery in Victoria, BC. It was a 3 hour drive for me in pouring rain , and home again in darkness and torrential downpour. But I felt much love from those in attendance who were strangers at the beginning, but have taken me in and comforted me as one of their own during these darkest days of my life. To hear Sam’s name read out was difficult. But the rain poured down around us , as a mirror image of the tears that fall from my heart and soul daily since he left.