Carved in Granite

Peter and Xiomara, with 6-year-old Andrew and nearly-4-year-old Victoria, visited last weekend. On Saturday we went to Bedford Farms, a local ice cream stand. Our congregation, the Arlington Ward, always frequents Kimball Farm in Carlisle, but I’ve heard good things about Bedford Farms and it is nearly 4 miles closer to our house. (The ice cream was delicious. I had a blueberry swirl. Jim had outstanding ginger.)

On the way to ice cream, we passed the cemetery, and Jim turned in. Andrew wanted to know what it was and I explained it in simple terms.

We drove to David's grave and I knelt at the stone with Victoria and Andrew. As I read aloud:

I suddenly realized that Victoria would recognize it as her birthday. Victoria was born at 11:40 p.m., 40 minutes after David died. She will always share that date with him. I wasn't prepared to face that fact with her on the way to ice cream. But for Victoria it was simply a curiosity, that her birthday was on a stone in the grassy ground. Death isn’t tinged with sadness, horror, and longing for her. It’s just a fact: two things happened on the same date, both of them theoretical and mysterious to my three-year-old granddaughter.

Two months after David died, I wrote:

I’m sitting on the soft brown couch in Riverdale (the Bronx), listening to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, little Victoria kicking her legs and waving her arms. Andrew is munching on Lucky Charms in between kissing his baby sister.

Victoria was born 40 minutes after David died. She’s now two months old. It will always be easy to remember the date. Will I remember it more for the death or the life? The life I think. Every year Victoria will change; she’ll have her first birthday, her fifth, her sixteenth. David’s date will be static, slowly fading into the past, but never forgotten.

And now, nearly four years on, I start having the answer to the question I posed. Both events will always be significant; any mention of that date will immediately bring to mind two events. And, yes, Victoria will change constantly and her birthday will have new meaning each year as she grows up. But we won't forget David. New experiences surround us every day, but the fact of his life will never fade. We continue to have six children.


October 12, 2019 will be the fifth year that we host the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) bloodmobile for a blood drive in memory of David, who received many transfusions from MGH in the 15 month course of his treatment there. That has become, by design, the focus of our remembrance of David: the month of his birthday. And on August 12, 2019, Jim and I will be in the Bronx, with a homemade strawberry birthday cake for Victoria.