Barbies

I've never written about the barbies before tonight and I am not sure why.

When Dylan died, we struggled with how much we should involve Sierra and we made a few mistakes, but we did manage to do something right when we included her in the funeral. She was only four years old at the time, but on some level I think we both understood that losing her brother was going to affect her for a long time too and we owed her as much of a sense of closure as we could pull off. So the morning of his funeral was cool, but there was that underlying sense of urgency-- that knowledge that it was going to get warm fast and would indeed be a hot day by the afternoon. The three of us left the apartment and headed towards Tumalo. We had to be there before everyone else, but we also wanted to stop by Safeway to drop off my prescription for pain medication and to get a light breakfast for Sierra (melon, I can still remember that I ate some and I was hungry enough that it tasted okay to me). Jason was also looking for a silver dollar, but the banks were not open. He wanted to throw it in the ground with Dylan (to pay for his crossing). Anyway we got out to Tumalo and the undertaker (Steve) was already there. He had this green astroturf looking stuff around the hole and Dylan's casket was lying across this brace type thing (not sure what it is really called, or even how else to describe it. It is so that the casket can be above ground and can be seen-- this thing holds it up.) There were twenty or twenty five folding chairs in front of the casket. We made some uncomfortable small talk with Steve for awhile and then people began arriving. Greg and Marissa and Syd and Achia were some of our people. As soon as Sierra saw her little friends (Marissa and Achia), she pulled her barbies out of her bag and those three little girls sat in the dirt in front of Dylan's casket and began playing together. Everything about that day was surreal to me, but the sweetness of those little girls all dressed up, sitting in that dirt pretending, helped me cope and got me through the day.