My husband & a couple others dug the hole. Not the standard six feet. Only three or so. Wide & long enough for the small coffin, with plenty of room to spare. Before our priest came I stood & looked down at the grave, at the stone we had placed at its head. It sits under a tree that was sent to us from Oklahoma by the father of a dear friend of ours. He passed away only a few months after we received the tree. We weren't sure how it would fare in our climate, but it's so far survived two New England winters. It seemed like an appropriate spot for our little one, the child that will never grow under the tree that grows against the odds. As I stared into the hole I felt suddenly self-conscious. Silly, even. All of this for a child who was only the size of a raspberry. But it didn't matter, not to me, how big or little she had been. Or if she had even been a she. I had carried her for more than 12 weeks; the first eight weeks alive, the next several for as
What fills the eye, fills the heart