October 23, five years ago today. A journey most difficult to make. To enter these hedges where broken hearts pour out their grief. To find a place to bury a treasure beyond price.
Within the heart-shaped hedges of Lullaby Land are the gravesites of infants and children.
A flagstone path leads into the small, perfectly tended garden.
At the very center of the heart is a stone figure of a cherub. Its wings are unfurled as if it has just arrived and perched on its pedestal; its finger pressed to its lips as if to gently shush the babies and children to sleep.
There is no other sound.
Tears fall silently.
Some tears escape her hand-brushed cheek and drop to her daughter’s heart-shaped headstone on which she had placed a single, pink rose.
Painstakingly she had planned the design of the infant’s marker – an agonizing task to somehow, in some way, capture the memory of lulling her baby to sleep as she had rocked her in her cradle.
The passage of time will not in and of itself heal her wounded heart. There will forever be a piece of it left here within the heart-shaped hedges of this cemetery.
And now, in just this last year, the grandmother of the little one gone too soon, my wife of 50 wonderful years married, my dearest treasure on all this earth, is buried nearby.
The passage of time will not in and of itself heal my twice-wounded heart. There will forever be pieces of my heart hidden away within and without the heart-shaped hedges of this cemetery.
They are together again. Holding and hugging one another.
And laughing.
But not crying.
They say that there are no tears in heaven.
Just here.
There are tears here.
