Not long after our son died, our mailbox filled with flyers advertising tombstones. We were expected to shop around. Would you like a rough or a smooth stone? Must it be thick or thin – marble maybe? We were also bombarded with telephone calls asking how much we wanted to spend on our beloved son’s tombstone. One tombstone representative was so argumentative, that I doubt whether he would ever eat food that agreed with him. Another man asked whether we wanted space on the side of the grave for plants or for a memorial candle. Not one of them expressed any kind of empathy or understanding about what we were going through.
Much later, we chose plain, rough marble, as plain as our son’s lifestyle had been.
