Hello, I’m really struggling with this issue, losing sleep, causing anxiety, I need to put it to bed and have some peace as it’s really troubling me. Can I explain how it’s come about..
My 28 year old daughter died last year leaving her husband and her baby son. She has expressed her wishes and planned her funeral and her wishes have been followed completely and respectfully. Her husband kept her ashes at home for 12 months and then the ashes were interned local to where my daughter lived.
My daughter lived some distance from me and I can’t visit and do her flowers as I would like because of the distance. My daughter wanted to be there because she worried about how her husband would cope with her dying, being without her and she chose to have her ashes locally there for that reason - so thst she would be close by. She was trying to make the decision. In his interests quite rightly.
Sadly it hasn’t turned out quite the way I think she envisaged. I found initially that when I visited her grave (no grave stone yet due to delays but it’s the way it is at the moment) her little plot and the ground itself was completely barren, no flowers, plants, nothing. I was already heartbroken but to see her grave neglected broke me. Subsequently I’ve been doing the journey once weekly to do her flowers and it gives me some comfort. I’ve asked my SIL would he help me and explained the journey factor, how it hurt me to see her grave empty and the fact that he lives locally there. He told me he struggled to do that as he wants to move on and forward and going to her grave sets him back.
He is in the process of making a final decision for her gravestone at the moment. My feelings are that if he doesn’t want to visit her grave (and has indeed moved on which is another story) then why oh why couldn’t my daughter ashes have been close to me where I live? I’ve more time to tend her grave and it gives me so much comfort. I worry snd I worry about what I’m going to do when I can no longer drive and I can’t go and tend her grave where she is now? Will her grave be barren and neglected forever more? This is my worry and my hurt part is the fact that he hasn’t been, although he did buy flowers for Mothers Day and asked a relative to take them.
I do realise it’s ok to move on, I get it. But I don’t understand how it can be ok to neglect his young wife’s grave.
I also understand I can have a plot local to me and we then have somewhere local to go and leave flowers and choose a lovely headstone, somewhere for family and friends to visit locally. However, my girls other resting place, her true resting place would still remain empty unless I can drive there and leave flowers. I could ask a relative on his side of the family to do it for me but it’s awkward.
I’ve turned it round and round in my head and I want with all my heart for her to be near me, where I know she’ll have flowers but how can I ask him? It would mean I’d have to ask csn I please have her ashes? Am I wrong to even think I could ask him? What can I do.
