37 Weeks - A Broken Cross, A Broken Heart

I arrived at Bergan Mercy for a 24 week u/s of Sam on Monday at around 3:50. My appointment wasn't until 4:15 and I was less than a block from the cemetery. I wanted to go, but I had only "driven by" once before without Tim or Noah with me. 
But I have time...I should go I thought.

When I pulled up I saw what no Mommy wants to see.

Everything we had put out for her, ALL of her decorations had been removed. All that remained was a battered green marker id-ing her spot as "Amelia Grace Lorang."

It looked like a paupers grave, forgotten and untended.

The tears came without control. I could hardly get out of the car.

I knew the cemeteries policies but had been under the impression that they "left Babyland alone."

Clearly they do not.

Beginning March 1st, all grave decorations must be attached or contained in a cemetery approved vase.

We have yet to purchase a marker for our little Amelia.

Which meant not only had all that we had lovingly placed there for her had been removed and piled in trash heap just behind the cemetery office, but that anything we placed there between now and mid November would be removed as well.

I have been planning for weeks, the design of an Easter basket for Amelia's grave that I now know cannot be.

I would not have expected to lose all emotional hold of myself at the realization that I could not decorate my daughter's grave. I hardly shed a tear at her funeral service for pities sake!!!!
Why this? Why now?

With the help of the Manager of the cemetery,
I waded through the garbage in search of Amelia's things.

Her pinwheel ~ gone...

sometimes people rummage through and take the nicer things, he explained.

Really?!?!?

Her Purple cross~only a portion remained dangling from the bent metal frame.

I managed to find a small angel and some remnants of her red Christmas flowers. The manager stood by as I tiptoed through the pile, asking...is there anything in particular you are looking for?

Not really I said. There was a pinwheel I said.  
Just her things I said.

I told him it was ok, I understood. There was nothing he could have done...

I quietly loaded the flowers and plastic angel  into the trunk of the Acura and hurried away the tender apologies of the manager trailing behind in the exhaust.

In the parking lot facing the maternity center where Amelia was born and died, I tried to pull myself togther. It took me almost 15 minutes just to stop crying enough, to walk through the hospital doors for my appointment.

My heart is still in pieces days later.
This morning I laid it all at the foot of the cross and I was comforted by these words...

 

When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.

1 Corinthians 15:54

We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. 

Romans 6:4-5