Our bench is here!

Back in August we decided to order a bench to put under the tree near Lauren, so we will have a place to be comfortable when we visit, or when anyone else visits Lauren, or in the future, Me and Brandon since we have the plots next to Lauren. Getting our bench put in place correctly has been a very frustrating experience.

We decided the granite color and what we wanted the bench to look like in August. In the meantime, we were having several issues with Lauren's headstone. We ordered that in July and were told 4-8 weeks at the most. We finally got it at the beginning of November and it was not exactly how we wanted it. We were offered to redesign it, but I declined it because it was still beautiful and waiting on it to come in was harder than you would expect. I was tired of all the frustration and agony on waiting for something so important so I told them I just wanted the bench since we were waiting on it so long. Well another issue we had was the granite color on her marker was wrong, we paid extra to have it match her bench and that was never put in place, so that was the 2nd mistake. Since I was so angry and upset, they told me they would try to have the bench installed by Christmas.

Right before Christmas, they installed the bench, but they made another mistake. It was wrong. It was devastating to have something so important and something you have been waiting on for so long, to finally come and it is incorrect. So the bench was wrong in so many ways. 1) The lettering was the wrong color; we chose to have white lettering instead of black. 2) The font was incorrect, it was italicized 3) the sides were not smoothed down like my husband wanted, and 4) the seat design is not how we wanted. I just couldn't understand, there are so many more elaborate benches around the cemetery than what we had chosen, but yet ours was wrong. So they told us they would keep it in place to have another ordered, but they did not. That bench was taken up. Finally in April her bench was back. Yet again, it was wrong. Almost all the corrections were made but this time the bottom half of the bench was white and the seat was in black lettering. I about lost it. I went inside there and told the person who was "helping" us the entire time off. I got the response of "Oh, you wanted it all white?" SERIOUSLY??!... Who would want a bench that does not match and has different color lettering? So we were told that we would get a call back the next day and did not receive one. Finally my husband went off on the person in charge (this was not the first time - I submitted a complaint back in October about them, and my husband and I both have spoken to the person in charge because of all the mistakes, but we thought the staff would have made some corrections on how to handle things, obviously we were mistaken.) Anyways, we were told the correction would be made on Friday. Sadly, it rained that day and we had to wait until Monday. Monday, April 23rd, after 8, close to 9 months of waiting, our bench was installed and it was correct.

A lot of people don't understand how when you lose a child, each and every thing you have, or get to remind you of your child, are just so precious, they are precious treasures. We don't have much from the time Lauren got to spend with us, so whatever we do have to buy for her or for us to remember her is just amazingly special to us. It was a beautiful day on Monday where we could take pictures of our bench; we could sit, smile, enjoy the breeze, and talk to our baby girl.

I am going to post some pictures of our bench, but they really do not do justice to how beautiful the color of the bench really is.