I am posting this blog I had on another site.

Today we held a service for Dane.  Missa started off with Psalms 29, 24, and 23, and then Matthew 6.  She also added some comments of her own.  Then I came next.  First I read the first section of W. H. Auden's "Funeral Blues"—
 
I only included the first part, because if I were to include the second, it would have been a very strange reading for my child.
 



Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,

Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public

    doves, 

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.

For nothing now can ever come to any good.
 

After that I read something I had written last night:



Usually when there is a service like this, it is a celebration of a person's life and an opportunity for people to share memories of that life.  Today it is hard to do, because we lost Dane before we ever got to know him.

 


Dane, you're here today, in this urn, ashes formed from the smallness of your body, which was wrapped in a slip of a baby's blankets.  There is so little of you.  There were no bones to burn, and you never had a chance for your bones to grow.  You never had a chance for your bones to break, from a fall from a tree or from getting hit badly on a football field.

 


Today, Dane, I do not get to share memories of the first steps you took or the first time you stumbled and fell, hitting your head on the entertainment center, with me trying to figure out a way for your mother to not notice the small indentation on your forehead.

 
Today, I can't talk about your first day of school and how much it upset your mother.  I can't talk about how proud you were when you came home with your first 'A' or how you sulked into the house afraid after you had your first fight.  I can't talk about your first crush or the time you woke up late and went to school, only noticing as you sat down in class that you had two different shoes on, hoping nobody would notice.




I wish today I could tell about how you played in Little League, and you always tried so hard, but secretly you were mad at me, because the bad vision you apparently inherited from me.  I wish I could talk about how excited and happy you were after you got your first girlfriend and how you stayed in your room, playing sad music for hours at a time, after you broke up with your first girlfriend.

 


You and I would watch baseball and go to movies and talk about anything from books to boogers, and we would blame farts on each other.  There would be times when you would think I just don't understand you, and we would walk around each other not talking for days, and we would share a small joke, probably on your mom or your sisters, and we would wonder what the hell we had fought about.



 
I can never tell about the day you met the love of your life, how you were so nervous when you proposed to her, running around the hotel the day of your wedding, wondering what the hell happened to the ring.  I can never express the joy you would have felt when you told me about the birth of my grandchild.

 


I wish I was not standing here, talking about you…wish that I had succumbed many years before you; wish that you were remembered by your children and grandchildren and great grandchildren, that your life had been long and joyful and sad and fun and memorable.

 


I had so many dreams for you, and I looked forward to you changing those dreams, telling me I don't understand who you are.  I wish I had the opportunity to not understand who you are.  Today I have this urn and some pictures and a doctor's words cutting through my heart.  And I have January 11, 2007, the day you were born and the day you died, and the day that will forever be etched in my mind, the day of my son, Dane Xavier, who I love, though I never got a chance to meet you.  

 


After that we played Johnny Cash's version of "Bridge Over Troubled Water".  Robyn then read what she had written, which covered some of the things I had written, but from a sister's point of view (including showing him where Dad's Playboys were).

 


Bella didn't want to say anything, but she had put together a collage for Dane.  After Robyn finished, we played Willie Nelson's version of "Amazing Grace".  Then we in turn went to the table where Dane's ashes were (in addition to a box Missa had made that included all the things we associated with him, including an outfit, things she had cut out, and other things).  We each blew out a candle.
 


And that was how we spent our day, putting our child to rest and moving on with our grief.