I’ve never been one for gravesites.  There’s no one there, just a box and decayed carcass.  In fact I’ve always said I wanted to be cremated and scattered to the wind.  If I did have a tombstone it’d read: “Why the hell are you bothering me now when ya could’ve visited me when I was alive?”

There are, and will be, painfully few people in your lifetime who will love you so completely and unabashedly, without fault or pretensions.  My Grandfather was one these people.  His favorite picture of me was Grandma holding my cousin and myself on her lap, she was leaning in to give my cousin a kiss and I had my fists balled up ready to knock her out for stealing even the slightest attention from me.  Grandpa loved that picture and proudly displayed it on his fridge for the world to see.

My Grandpa’s birthday was one week before mine.  He wanted nothing more than for me to be born on his birthday.  Alas, I was quite stubborn and if the doctor had not induced labor I would most likely still be hanging out in Mother’s uterus today.  There was a slight complication: Mother would not dilate and I had managed to wrap the umbilical cord around my throat.  After a seemingly endless labor they rushed her in for an emergency C-section.  And so it was fair to say that the waiting room was a bit tense.  When the nurse came out to present me to the family Grandpa rushed to be the first in line.  He gasped and stepped backwards with tears in his eyes.  Of course everyone else completely freaked out and Grandma demanded, “Robert!  What’s wrong?”  Grandpa said, “She’s perfect.”

I never felt the agonizing 1500 mile distance from my Grandfather’s grave than I did this weekend.  I just wanted to be there; rain, sleet, snow, wind, bugs or snakes be damned – just to lie on the grass knowing that 6 feet below there lay a small marble box containing a few handfuls of ashes -- ashes that used to be my Grandpa who loved me blindingly and without reason.