Grayson’s Burial

May 14, 2026: It’s Thursday morning. Our son has been dead for four days. 

Despite my muddled brain and shaking hands, I manage to cook a simple breakfast of eggs, buttered toast, and apple slices. We haven’t been home for four months since our semester in Boston, and the bare refrigerator clearly speaks to our absence. Slowly, I walk the wobbling plates up the hill on our property, where Arin and our friend, Jeremy, are digging Grayson’s grave. The distant sight of the gaping earth-hole churns my insides, and I don’t linger long, knowing that that black looming void will forever consume our son in just three days. 

May 15, 2026: I sneak away from home while the household is barely stirring, and walk to the top of the hill shortly after the sun has crested the Sangre de Cristos. The Blood of Christ. In the softness of the early morning light, Grayson’s grave is simply a hole, so I approach it and sit down at its edge, allowing my feet to dangle freely. The bottom seems lightyears away, and I cry shoulder-heaving sobs. Out of nowhere, our three orange barn cats appear to comfort me. They rub their bodies against mine, tickling my nose with their tails, and within a few brief moments, my tears cease flowing. 

It’s hard to feel sad for too long up here; at 9300 feet, the highest point of our property has a way of curing whatever ails. 

A quiet peace settles over me then, along with a simplistic, matter-of-fact thought: Millions of people have buried their dead in the earth, just like we will soon bury Grayson, and while death is not “natural,” it is certainly common. People live, and people die, and our family is not exempt from its reach. This was Grayson’s time to die. 

Shortly, Arin comes and sits with me, and tears flow again, but this time, they’re softer. 

This time, they are quietly accepting.

May 17, 2026: The morning has been a blur, but we’ve made it through church and back home. Arin has successfully connected with the Hearst driver at the bottom of our driveway to transfer Grayson’s casket to the bed of Arin’s truck. He and a few other men have transported Grayson’s body up our steep, bumpy driveway, then placed it over the grave—suspended on a few 4x4s—to await burial. 

Grayson’s graveside service is brief. The weather is overcast and windy. I notice a few scattered faces despite the many in attendance, my sister breastfeeding her new baby with my son’s grave in the foreground, and the youngest cousins peering dangerously down the hole, sending clods of dirt tumbling. Their energy never changes; for them, life is still constant excitement and adventure, and I love them for this, for the life they bring even to death. 

A sense of foreboding mounts in my body. Very soon, I will pick up a shovel. Very soon, I will cast the first earth. 

The service concludes, and Arin signals me with a tender nudge. I grip the shovel handle, drive the head into the loose dirt, then toss it onto Grayson’s coffin. Despite Vince Gill’s “Go Rest High on That Mountain” playing in the background, all I hear is the dull, resounding thud of soil hitting wood, and this sound encapsulates the word “final” more than anything I’ve ever known.  

Even so, I feel refreshingly solid and self-contained—no shakiness, no sadness—so I pivot, plunge my shovel back into the dirt, and again, deposit earth on my son’s coffin. 

Soon, Arin and four of our five children join me. In their presence, an internal rhythm forms: plant the shovel, sink it deep, lift with two legs, turn and drop. There is a surprising pleasantness to this rhythm, and so I succumb to it, allowing myself to slip into autopilot. The world, which has felt so overwhelming and crushing as of late, now shrinks to an entirely manageable single scoop of dirt at my feet.

In my peripheral vision, I witness my sister take a shovel, tears dripping off her tiny button nose, and then her husband’s flip-flops flimsily pressing his shovel into the dirt. Behind me, I sense Grayson’s second- through fifth-grade teacher shoveling. I hear his sniffles and feel his tears. In time, my dad takes the shovel before me and totters too close for comfort near the grave’s edge. I pause and direct him forward, as a dear friend appears out of thin air. He does not guide my dad away from the shovel, but simply stands guard, respectfully allowing him to continue digging. Next, Grayson’s best friend’s father steps in, halts, and breaks down. He and his wife know all too well the struggles of raising a special needs child, and it’s in his son’s stead that he shovels. 

Eventually, a friend places a gentle hand on my shoulder and suggests I join my family. But I cannot. Physically, I cannot stop. My instinct will not allow it. I am Grayson’s mother. This is my job. I brought him into this world, and I must see him out till the very end. This is the last time I will ever tuck him into bed, so to speak, and I feel determined to see my task through to completion. My friend understands without me having to say so, and leaves me to continue shoveling.

Now, my vision grows even narrower, so breathtakingly narrow, and I find myself strangely falling in love with every moment, every movement, every beat of this newfound rhythm…and so, I surrender. 

With every inhale and exhale, I surrender more and more deeply—to the shovel, the rhythm, the labor, my breath, the earth, the filling grave, Grayson’s death, the pain, and the beauty. 

I give myself to it wholly, gladly, willingly. I release everything in me to the wind, to the grave, to the mountains…to God.

On and on the music plays, and hands on the shovels continue to rotate. I notice that every time I place my shovel in the dirt, Caleb, our oldest, immediately fills it using his rake from the opposite side of the pile. His attunement to me does not go unnoticed; I know without looking that he is studying my face, watching my every move like a hawk. 

Additionally, any separation between individuals is rapidly diminishing. We are becoming bound together upon this bedrock of pain and love. 

We, a ragtag group of friends and family from all different backgrounds, are becoming a community. 

Corporate tears flow freely, watering the earth, and now everything is melding into one giant, sobbing, heaving, beautiful mess. 

Body, mind, and spirit unite alongside nature, humankind, and the Divine. 

THIS is how humans were meant to be buried: The earth offering up one gaping wound in her flesh, one mound of her innards. Multiple shovels wrapped in two aching, offering hands. One scoop of dirt at a time. 

And suddenly I see it with stunning clarity: the laboring, the rhythm, my intentional breathing, a black gaping earth-womb being filled with my son.

It is not for Grayson’s death that I feverishly labor…but his birth.