Open Letter to Anyone Who Has Ever Visited an Infant Grave

It's been almost two years since we lost our daughter Kathryn. I can tell you in minute detail what her grave looks like; where it is located, what her plaque looks like and what is written on it. I can tell you that there are baby boys buried on each side of her and that she is in a row of infant graves, most of which only have the one date on the plaques, like Kat's.

Due to unfortunate (and terrible, horribly unfair) circumstances, we moved less than two months after Kat died. We now live a day's drive away from where Kat is buried.

Let me state right up that Michael and myself dislike graves looking like shrines. We don't like little toys and trinkets being left over graves. On a few occasions we have been given little bits and pieces and they are kept with Kat's things. We also don't like artificial flowers that get left to fade and fray. However, I know by looking down the row of infant graves that Kat is buried in our distaste for scattering "things" over a baby's grave puts us in a very small minority; by taking a quick scan around the cemetery I can see that our distaste for artificial flowers on graves also puts us in a minority.

If we still lived in the same town that Kat is buried her grave would have fresh flowers placed on it every week. I would lovingly tend them in our garden, pick them each week and take to her. I would kneel down on her resting place and talk, cry, sob, scream, feel, hug my family..... all the things I do when I still have occasion to go to the grave, only now I buy the flowers as I go through town instead of growing them myself.

But we don't still live there and it is our choice to not leave artificial flowers or "things" on her grave. To the other parents, relatives and friends of deceased babies her grave probably looks deserted. To us, artificial flowers and a shrine would underline that feel. We believe that fading fake flowers look as though a person thinks that they don't "have to" tend a grave because it has been decorated already.

Please understand that we pass no judgment on how other people choose to keep their loved ones' graves. This is just our personal position.

And so I would really appreciate it if the person who puts artificial flowers from the grave next to Kat's on to Kat's grave would stop doing so. Each time we go there I put those flowers back where they came from and each time I go back there they are again.

Our baby has not been deserted. A lack of artificial flowers and "things" on her grave does not indicate that we care any less for her than people who choose to adorn graves care for their babies. Leaving Kat's grave behind was probably the single most difficult thing about moving - among a very long list of extremely difficult things about that move and the circumstances surrounding it. We were robbed of the chance to tend our daughter's grave, to visit it just because we felt like it. There are now only rare occasions that we or our families are able to visit and leave fresh flowers. Each time someone goes there feels like a special occasion instead of the normal part of grieving it should be. It is heartbreaking for us. But artificial flowers and toys are not our answer; this is simply our wish and it is one that is our choice and ours alone to make.