Yesterday was a hard day, I woke up after a dream that the hospital has lost Charlie & Jackson and we still hadn’t heard from the funeral home.  When we talked to the funeral home the first time they said they would let us know when they had transported them, so we called the hospital but we hadn’t gotten any of our messages returned, it was a haunting feeling all day.

We ended up in the doctors office because we were both a bit concerned and the office nurse called around until she found them, they had been transported to the funeral home.  I felt so relieved once I knew where my sons were.

Today we met with the funeral home, it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, really it wasn’t, we had already talked about what we wanted.  Charlie and Jackson (Jackson’s middle name is Decatur by the way, we never came up with a middle name for Charlie, but Charlie fit him perfectly) will be cremated and their ashes co-mingled in an urn.  We picked out a cute little urn, I never knew they made them so small, I suppose it is so different family members can have a little bit of their loved one, but both our loved ones will go into the one urn.  It is a small silver urn with a blue design and white birds.  The funeral home offers a discount to parents who have lost an infant so they charged us $1 for their services and the cremation and then the urn was very affordable.  It was a great relief to know that they would be taken care of.

We did laugh a few times at the funeral home, once when they gave us the pamphlet on cremation and the first thing you read is, "Cremation is an irreversible process."  Umm…yes it is.  I may be mourning the loss of my boys and dealing with a lot of grief, but this I knew.  Then normally by law they are not allowed to co-mingle ashes, they said they could put the remains of each of them in separate plastic bags inside the urn, but neither of us liked that idea, we would be always thinking of them being in little ziplock bags, so we had to sign a waiver stating that we wanted their remains to be co-mingled, and it says, "it was explained to us that this would be irreversible and once done cannot be altered."  This too I know, but the thought of someone trying to reseparate cremated remains was quite humorous to me.

Nathan and I talked about having a memorial service, but we decided that while we appreciate all the support our friends and family have given us and it is great to see them, we really feel that we didn’t want to have a memorial, everything that can be said has been said, and we hope that everyone who wanted or needed closure can gain that through us privately.

So our boys will be coming home in about a week and half or so, who knew it took so long, but they have to have the Dr’s signature on the vital statistics form and then apply for a permit for the cremation, which I never would have imagined.   I am feeling some peace knowing they are going to be home soon, and every now and then I can feel their spirits surrounding the two of us.  Nathan jokes that if our area was more organized they might like to visit more, but I think they are just happy to be with their family, giving us their support just like everyone else has.

Also we have had a few questions about donations to charitable organizations in Charlie & Jackson’s memory and I found out that NWAMOTC (Northwest Association Mothers of Twins Club) has a scholarship fund for multiples seeking higher education and a summer camp scholarship, we know that Charlie & Jackson would be proud and honored to be a part of that.