Charlie's Birthday

On Thursday, May 6, it would have been Charlie's 50th Birthday! Charlie was my husband and father to our daughter. The day before his birthday I asked my daughter if she wanted to go to his grave to put balloons on, or she wanted me to go while she was in school. She has this thing about going to his grave, where she doesn't want to go, then she wants to go, then she doesn't.....eventually, she will go but often states that she is just going to stay in the car while we are there. She never does that.

After school, I picked her up and told her we were going to daddy's grave. Immediately, she said she didn't want to go....but I told her she had to, otherwise I would have gone during the day. We headed to the cemetery, about a 20 minute ride, and I was hoping that I could find a dollar store on the way to get balloons so I wouldn't have to go to a florist and spend $5 a balloon. Luckily, we did find a dollar store . We went in and they had an impressive selection of mylar balloons. I let her pick out two. While we were waiting for the balloons to be filled, she found a little teddy bear holding roses and had a heart that said "I Love You" on it. She asked if she could get that too for dad's grave and one similar for herself...of course I let her. We also got some pretty light blue stones to leave on top of the headstone (well, they are little glass things, probably for the bottom of a vase). We always have problems finding stones to leave, but now I have a whole bag of them I will leave in my car for when we visit.

We got the the gravesite and she broke down. It weighs greatly on me to see my daughter in such pain because it is one thing that I can do absolutely nothing about. She often blames the doctors for not helping him (they couldn't) and God. I find it so hard to explain to her that everybody did everything they could.....In time, I hope she believes me.....