On a recent trip abroad, I meandered through a cemetery reading gravestones. Some were old and faded and some very recent and fresh.

It is always interesting to me to observe how mourners memorialize their loved ones, and the variety of expressions they create when they visit graves year after year.

As I wandered, I discovered a sizable corner section devoted to babies born asleep. These stone or metal markers had only one date. Birth and death had occurred the same day.

Some of these graves were adorned with flowers, toys, stuffed animals, angel statues, and plaques with inscribed poems, sayings, and tributes to the child. Others had only a small stone or plaque on the ground with the name and the singular date, nothing more.

I made no assumptions about the mourners represented there, whether their expressions were simple or extravagant. Grief is a very personal affair. There are no right or wrong ways to show love to someone who has died.

One of the leaders of our excursion noted that life is what happens in the dash between birth and death. At this moment I shared my observation about these stillborn infants whose grave markers contained no dash. Only a dot. One day.

At that point, a woman in our group spoke up. She shared that she had delivered such a child, a daughter, more than 20 years ago.

The baby had been loved and named during the pregnancy, but sadly couldn't grow and be known beyond her birth. The baby had been mourned and buried, but her grave did not yet have a stone.

My traveling........

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