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Headstone. Final Resting Place. A Reminder That This Is All Real. Gone Too Soon. A Day At Bountiful Cemetery. Untitled. I could not come up with an appropriate title for this one. 

This day was much harder than I thought it would be. Seeing the headstone put in place is another reminder that this is all real. It's not a nightmare I will wake up from. It is my life. A life I am trying to figure out how to function in. But for now, until I can get a grip on my reality, I will have a place to go be with Jonas. I really am happy with the way the headstone turned out. I am pretty sure Jonas is happy with it too. 

It took me a long time to make a final decision on this headstone. Luckily, McMullin Memorials was so good to work with me and all my changes! There were so many more things I wanted to add to the headstone, but since I couldn't have a raised one (you have to own four single plots to get a raised headstone at Bountiful Cemetery) I wanted to put things on it that would forever remind us of Jonas. A headstone that would give our three sons a small glimpse of what was important to their dad and what he enjoyed in life.

I had wanted to put our wedding date, June 26, 1997 on it and also Sam, Ben, and Jack's handprints. I also wanted to put the words to the song "Gone Too Soon". With a raised headstone I probably could have.....but, oh well. This is what we have.

If you knew Jonas, then you knew he was a HUGE Utes fan. He LOVED his Utes! Our last date together was to a U of U football game. That was Nov. 6, 2010. Oh how I wish I would have been able to go to more games with him. He was always so happy there and usually lost his voice by the end of the game from cheering so loud! 

I chose the lake with the dad and three sons fishing because that is what they loved to do together. They didn't get to do it very often, but Jonas always talked about how much fun they would have fishing together as the kids got older. Jonas had so many fun plans for family camping trips and fishing trips. "As soon as I get feeling better....." or "As soon as I don't have to haul around all these IV antibiotics and TPN....." Yes. We were always looking forward to the day Jonas would be feeling better. We had such fun plans for the future!

I originally had Beloved Husband, Father, Son, & Brother along the bottom. But I had also wanted to put a saying on there that would "be" Jonas. So I had to choose. I was talking to Joe's mom about my dilemma and we were trying to come up with sayings that would be fitting for Joe. She laughingly said "Schrodinger's cat is dead." Jonas had a black shirt that had in white print "Schrodinger's Cat Is Dead" on the front and "Schrodinger's Cat Is Not Dead" on the back. He had found this shirt on a website called Think Geek. He loved browsing through the products they had for sale. He loved being a geek! He came home from work one day and said, "you know, electrical engineers really are geeks and I am a total and complete geek." I just started laughing at him because he was so serious when he said it. Ahhhhh. How I loved and adored my geeky husband!

Now for the explanation of what Schrodinger's cat is dead and Schrodinger's cat is not dead means. I don't know. Please Google.  Seriously. Here is what Wikipedia has to say:

Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment, usually described as a paradox, devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. It illustrates what he saw as the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics applied to everyday objects. The thought experiment presents a cat that might be alive or dead, depending on an earlier random event. In the course of developing this experiment, he coined the term Verschränkung (entanglement).

Schrödinger's thought experiment was intended as a discussion of the EPR article, named after its authors—Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen—in 1935.^[1] The EPR article had highlighted the strange nature of quantum entanglement, which is a characteristic of a quantum state that is a combination of the states of two systems (for example, two subatomic particles), that once interacted but were then separated and are not each in a definite state. The Copenhagen interpretation implies that the state of the two systems undergoes collapse into a definite state when one of the systems is measured.

Schrödinger and Einstein had exchanged letters about Einstein's EPR article, in the course of which Einstein had pointed out that the state of an unstable keg of gunpowder will, after a while, contain a superposition of both exploded and unexploded states.

To further illustrate the putative incompleteness of quantum mechanics, Schrödinger describes how one could, in principle, transpose the superposition of an atom to large-scale systems of a live and dead cat by coupling cat and atom with the help of a "diabolical mechanism". He proposed a scenario with a cat in a sealed box, wherein the cat's life or death was dependent on the state of a subatomic particle. According to Schrödinger, the Copenhagen interpretation implies that the cat remains both alive and dead (to the universe outside the box) until the box is opened.

Schrödinger did not wish to promote the idea of dead-and-alive cats as a serious possibility; quite the reverse, the paradox is a classic reductio ad absurdum.^[2] The thought experiment serves to illustrate the bizarreness of quantum mechanics and the mathematics necessary to describe quantum states. Intended as a critique of just the Copenhagen interpretation (the prevailing orthodoxy in 1935), the Schrödinger cat thought experiment remains a topical touchstone for all interpretations of quantum mechanics. How each interpretation deals with Schrödinger's cat is often used as a way of illustrating and comparing each interpretation's particular features, strengths, and weaknesses.

Ummmmm. Ok. Did y'all understand that!?!?  The crazy thing is Jonas did. He loved this kind of stuff. He read physic books for FUN. Not for school or work but for PURE enjoyment. For FUN! 

Yup. There is my honey reading his favorite book
 "Understanding Physics" by Isaac Asimov

Jonas also loved puzzles. Logic puzzles, math puzzles, game puzzles. We were always trying to find a puzzle that would stump Jonas and take him longer than 20 minutes to figure out. I don't think we were ever successful! He would complete the "extremely hard puzzles" as the packages would claim in less than 30 min. Really Joe?!? He would just smile and do his little laugh.

So his headstone is a mix of things he loved. He loved me. He loved his boys. He loved fishing with his boys. He enjoyed physics and he enjoyed puzzles. That is why it is a puzzle to see if you can see both words "alive" and dead".

I especially wanted Jonas to know that we would love him forever. And we will.