Originally Published on Velveteen Mind

Suburban Oblivion recently complained that her two year old had been replaced by demon spawn. She welcomed any interest in buying him on eBay.

As luck would have it, someone took her up on the offer. Someone that apparently can not have children. Sara responded with an exercise in gratitude, expressing that it sometimes takes getting bitch-slapped in the comments to remember how good you have it.

What followed was a discussion in Suburban Oblivion’s comments that touched on a topic that I take very personally. The topic of gratitude and our right to be ungrateful some days. This is something that I’ve been meaning to write about for some time, but always back down. Sara is a great fire-starter, so here goes.

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Originally published at Strange Musings of a Distracted Spunk.

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Originally published on Loralee’s Looney Tunes

I visited my son’s grave today.

There was no special reason. No holiday or anniversary. No family or friends that live far away who wanted to pay their respects. I was just driving and saw the snow on the ground and wanted to check on my son, clean up his grave, and remove the decorations that I put up for Autumn.

Matthew is buried in a beautiful spot. We put him next to family, a cousin of Jonathan’s that was killed in a car crash with his grandmother when she was only 19. It makes me feel better that his cousin is close by. I will be buried near him, but not next to him because that space was occupied, which makes me very sad.

It used to make me angry.

The grave right next to my son is occupied by what they call a “Pauper grave”. Meaning, that the plot was donated and the family doesn’t have the resources for a headstone. There is a metal marker that has an index card with typing on it. The womans name has been obliterated. All I know is that death occurred in July of 1998 and that she was only 41 at the time of passing.

In the four years since my Little Bug has passed, my feelings about “Her” have changed. It’s still hard to know that this stranger gets a place that I yearn to have, but instead of being angry, I began to be curious about this neighbor of my son. Who was she? What was she like? Did she have any family?

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Originally published on Family Clay, Smushed Together and titled Koson’s Lesson.

This is a long one, but stick with it. It’ll be worth it. I promise.

It was a Thursday night in the fall of 1982; I was fourteen years old. I remember the day of the week because in our soccer league, Thursday nights were game nights. My father was our coach, and on this night we’d just lost to a bigger, more skilled team. After the loss I was walking back to the parking lot with my teammates (dad was trailing far behind, talking with some of the other parents) when somebody from our team must’ve said something to some members of the other team about how hard they sucked or how big their mommas were. The three largest guys on their team were pretty sure I’d said it and wanted to show me how much they didn’t appreciate it. As I turned to see what was going on (at this point I had no clue), I saw the three (much) larger kids coming my way.

At the time I stood about 5?10? and was pretty skinny. But I had a big
mouth, and it sometimes got me into more trouble than my 160 pound body
could get me out of. And while I hadn’t said anything to these guys, I
wasn’t planning on backing down.

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