Finally Done, but Never Over

Due to a bit of miscommunication with the cemetery we almost missed the placing of my brother's grave marker. Fortunately I was able to get work it out with them, so on St Patrick's day we went out there. For the week prior it had been raining heavily, this is not particularly unusual in the Pacific Northwest, but it meant we were prepared to be very wet. All day there wasn't a whole lot of rain which I was happy about, then about an hour before we were going to leave the rain started.

We timed things so that my husband would get home from work and then we would leave immediately with my parents following us to get to the cemetery for our appt. Instead the baby didn't take his nap and was cranky, the kids didn't want to go (which was fine) and my parents arrived late. We rushed through getting the baby ready to go with us and driving through pouring rain and traffic to get to the cemetery almost 15 minutes late. Fortunately I called ahead and they were ok with us being late.

My mom has taken my brother's death the hardest. Sometimes she talks about it as if it were a personal attack from God against her because she was just coming back to her faith, other times she seems to recognize that it had little to do with her, but more often she cannot even think about my brother or anything related to the outside world. She spends her days playing games on the computer and listening to audio books.

When we arrived at the cemetery the rain had slowed to a sprinkle and as I got out of the car I saw this:
The picture doesn't quite do the rainbows justice. The bottom rainbow was actually a double rainbow, making it a triple rainbow (though Jeff said the bottom two were only one because they were attached). My brother was 33 when he died which just adds to the whole 3 thing.


Corbin fell asleep on the drive over and miraculously stayed asleep. I went into the office to let them know we had arrived, and met the guy by the grave. Within a few minutes of our arrival the rainbows disappeared and the rain slowed and then stopped. The ground was saturated, but at least we weren't getting rained on.
Once the marker was placed and had the mud washed off we were left alone. Almost as soon as the caretaker drove the little cart off I noticed birds chirping loudly in a nearby tree and I looked up and saw blue sky. Not just a little blue either. It was blue and clear with just a few clouds and the sun was shining (something that doesn't happen often in Spring let alone the end of Winter). Every where I looked it was blue and clear.

My brother's favorite color was blue. My mom would work with him on his colors when he was a toddler (he was always precocious), and when he didn't want to play that game he acknowledged only two colors: blue and not-blue. He had his first car (and old beat up toyota corolla) painted blue. It was always his color.

When I looked over to my mom and saw that she got it, we both smiled. Then the church bells started ringing for the chapel across the street. I told my mom there was her sign. It couldn't have been clearer. The four of us talked a bit about my brother and how much we missed him, how we hoped he liked what we did for the marker and in choosing where to bury him. Then as we very slowly moved away we moved on to upcoming things and plans for the rest of the week. Finally, I gave my mom and dad a hug and then Jeff and I and sleeping Corbin headed home to our daily craziness.


Within minutes of getting on the road it started raining again.