I had now saved up enough money to buy headstones for Meghan and Dan. I had finally managed to get one for Freddie a few months ago, but had had to put off buying it for a couple of years after his death due to shortage of funds resulting from the impact of Coronavirus on my dog sitting business. In the meantime Dan passed away followed 5 months later by Meghan so I ended up having 3 headstones to purchase, which was not an inconsiderable sum.
In the spring of this year I worked out a plan so I could afford to buy the headstones spread over a period of several months. Once I had a headstone for Freddie I decided that rather than make the long journey to the Cambridge Pet Crematorium with Freddie’s ashes I would wait until I had Dan’s and Meghan’s headstones as well and then take all three of them to the crematorium for burial in the garden of remembrance.
The plan worked well and I got to the stage where I had ordered Dan and Meghan’s head stones and within a week or so they duly arrived back. I opened the first box and found that it was Meghan’s headstone. The first thing I saw was her name engraved in large typeface at the top of the memorial but then my eyes were drawn to the date of her passing below. To my shock instead of 02.03.23 which was the date I had supplied the date 02.02.23 stood out boldly on the stone. I was very upset. The first thing I thought was that I had made a typo and inadvertently supplied the wrong date. If that was indeed the case, there was no way I would be able to afford to get a replacement memorial or to have the date corrected. At the same time I felt awful that little Megs who, had been neglected and insignificant for so much of her short life, would have her life dishonoured in such a way that even at the very end the date of her death would be written down incorrectly on her memorial stone. I didn’t know her date of birth so I had put an enigmatic “?” where that date should have been, but I knew the date she had died and I really wanted to honour her life and have the correct date displayed on her memorial.
I went to look at the order form on my computer and to my relief I saw that I had indeed written the correct date and the company supplying the memorial had also acknowledged the order and written the correct date when they emailed me back, so the error was actually theirs and made at the time of production. I had ordered memorial stones for Cleo and Ellie from this company before and always found them to be accurate with good attention to detail, so I was surprised by this mistake.
I immediately contacted the company that supplied the memorial and they apologised and agreed to send me a replacement with the correct date on it. So all is well that ends well and my little baby girl will get the headstone memorial she deserves.