Double Diamond

Headstones. I own TWO of them. Their overall value is worth more than my car. I've gone without finer things and fancy vacations in order to buy them. I spend the money I would have spent on them had they lived. They would have needed clothes, food, toys and health care expenses. It costs money to have kids no matter how frugal one is.

So when I hear people's excuses about how they can't afford a headstone for their child, I have to ask myself how on earth did they plan on affording the kid if it had lived??? Most mortuaries are very generous in their layaway options. There's typically a fairly broad selection to choose from, with a variety of price ranges to fit one's needs. So why would someone not have the money to buy a headstone for their "beloved" child???

Too much previous debt?
Okay. But then how would they have managed that debt if the child had lived (and ended up costing even more than a headstone)? What extraneous sacrifices in food, clothes, toys or medical care would the living child have had to cope with?

Brian & I did the math. A small to average headstone runs about $600. In an 18month layaway, that's only $33 a month--less than $10 a week. Wouldn't that have been spent on the baby if he'd have lived? I would think so. But maybe with hand-me-downs, breastfeeding and medicaid, a family might be able to get away with not spending $10 a week on the new baby.

And yet we're pretty poor, and I don't I think I would have been able to not spend some sort of money each week on the baby. This is America--land of the spenders. And if we were already spending on our other children too, it would have been really hard not to spend at least a little something on the baby as the months went by.

We've been pretty poor over the last few years. Even at our poorest, I'm positive that we could have paid off the cheapest headstone within two years time--that runs just over $5 a week--people eat more at McD's or toss it away at the video rental store. That's such a reasonable plan that anything less really makes me question how a family would have coped with finances if the baby hadn't died.

Actually, I guess I have to admit that I question the real feasibility that a headstone is too expensive for even the poorest of families. We're amongst some of the poorest people we know, and yet we managed to buy TWO headstones in less than two years time. Plus, we put the expense of a granite bench on a credit card as a contribution to the baby cemetery. We took out debt, took up donations, and just plain did without things so we could use our credit card space to get it all paid for.

In light of all that, I have to confess it bothers me a great deal when parents go off and leave their child's gravesite unfinished. It bothers me when they use the excuse that they can't afford a headstone. Quite frankly, it's my own experience with both poverty and purchasing headstones, that if you can't whittle the money out of your budget to do a two-yr layaway plan for a headstone, then you can't afford the kid in the first place. What sort of welfare lifestyle are you putting your living children through if you can't work out a layaway on a simple headstone for a child that's died? What are you doing having more children if you can't afford to buy a simple headmarker for your child who died?

I recently show'd off my headstone pics to other loss moms that I know. I was met with a terrible response in guilt whereby one mom said, "boo hoo poor me, I wish I could afford a headstone for my baby." Of course, she has since had another baby after losing her son to the grave nearly two years ago. She bemoans not being able to afford a headstone for him and how badly she wishes they were able.

Excuse me, but how unfair of her to attmept to make me feel badly for "showing off" my headstones by saying "boo hoo it must be nice to afford such lavishness." Especially when she's had nearly two years to set money away. Not to mention that she's gone on to have another baby since then--how do they manage to afford their new baby if they couldn't afford the one who died??? She got a new baby and I got another headstone, but boo hoo you're so lucky to have such nice headstones, and I wish I had one too but I can't afford it.

In my old baby stompin grounds, I don't get to sport my baby pictures. My babies are dead and I get to take pictures of two seasonally decorated headstones instead. You'd think I could at least be given enough space to enjoy the simple pleasure of posting my pictures. But no, there's always got to be someone who needs to take that away from me too.

In the end, she made it agnoizingly clear that I made her feel bad because they haven't set away money for his headstone after all this time. I made her feel like a schmuck for not being more fiscally organized. And thus, "boo hoo your pictures made me feel like a terrible parent--and thanks for rubbing it in."

Great. So in response, you're going to make ME feel terrible for posting my pictures. The way I see it, if poor pathetic me can get multiple headstones paid for, then anybody in the poorest of families can pay for one. If you can't get it done it's because you have your head in your butt--especially after two years have gone by. I've seen the sort of cars people drive when they stop by the cememtery. I've seen with my own two eyes the types of people who bury their baby and then go off and leave a temporary marker to rot in the ground for multiple years. There's no excuse.