Visitors at Memory Gardens

Memory Gardens is not an immaculately kept resting place.  Compared with the well-groomed, lovingly kept parks with rows of granite decorated graves in such cities like Seattle, Salt Lake City or even Orem, Utah.

Gravel, sand, and occasional pavement compose the paths that surround the grassy beds reminding me of a seldom used trail along a backwoods mountain.  Contrast this somewhat neglected place with Farmington’s various public parks with their verdant colored and nicely edged lawns which are well fertilized and appear like country club golf courses.  Memory Garden still has made a soft corner in my heart, even though it looks more like a tattered suit from the 1970’s or a lumpy mattress with uneven rises and dips.  Most travelers passing it barely give it a second glance as they speed east on Main, heading for Aztec, its outskirts thick with groves of lush cottonwoods, with picturesque pastures dotted with grazing, well-bred horses and adorned with palatial houses their matching barns signs of money, while a river composes a postcard anyone would send to a friend as a memento.

Memory Gardens is a poor great-aunt who sits in an old rocker hoping for a distant relative to drop by for a visit.  To those who have loved-ones buried under its uneven lawn, this place is a bit of heaven.  These people seem prone to overlook the anorexic trees, the dry dirt patches, the thorny tumbleweeds stacked along the crippled and dented chain-link fence that line two sides of the cemetery.

Besides the dead, the garden has many living residents.  My dogs have chased several, including the excavating rodents, small, three-inch long lizards which move as quick as a wink into bushes and cinderblock crevices while ignoring the dozens of ant mounds, both the red and black varieties that scour the sandy terrain for anything edible.

I have come to like all the visitors as well as the permanent residents.

From my bedroom window that provides glimpses of the garden, I watched hundreds of human guests arrive in a parade formation to celebrate Memorial Day.  They came with brightly colored live and plastic flowers, small American flags, and barbecue, its savory smoke which wafted through my front yard exciting the dogs who begged to join the celebration, which we eventually did.

Just two weeks ago, the garden had the most interesting callers—a small herd of whitetail deer, six in number.  The leader was an antlerless buck (it’s summer now), standing six feet at the shoulder and still impressive without his fall headgear.  Accompanying him was a small harem of loyal does, as lovely and graceful as any Egyptian queen.  Bringing up the rear was an exuberant yearling, his long, bushy tail flashing like a sailor’s pennon.  He bounded over the upright headstones as if showing off his athletic potential his sire already possessed.

We surprised each other that early morning (the dogs were oblivious to this magnificent assembly, their attention firmly glued to some unimportant scent).  I stopped to gape and admire the scene these unexpected visitors created, appreciating lithe bodies, long thin limbs, and innately proud bearings, heads up, ears moving like satellite dishes searching for a faint signal until they located the origins of the jingle of the dogs’ choke chains.  The does and the yearling ambled instinctively toward the other side of the cemetery while the buck stood his ground briefly, in order to determine if this human and her miniature hounds were really a deadly threat.  He stomped once as a warning, as if I were a rival; but instead of taking heed, I started in his direction, almost challenging his patriarchal authority.

My actions finally caused his retreat, taking the path his family trotted along, already several yards a head.  Even as his sinewy form followed, he kept his large, liquid brown eyes on me and the menacing hounds.

Snorting an indignant insult in our direction, in three amazing bounds any Olympic long jumper would envy, he caught with his harem and offspring and continued to move them along the dirt road that exited the garden in a southerly direction toward the river.

When I finally got the dogs around the fence on the west side of the park and on to the uneven and brown-green grass the guests had traversed quite a long distance in less than thirty seconds.  It would have taken me fifteen minutes to do the same feat. 

Now Beanie, the fearless pursuer of ground squirrels and common lizards had finally noticed the deer’s pungent scent which had started to settle along the ground like an invisible mist.  He strained so hard on the leash he yanked the end out of my hand.

For a twinkling which came from his long dead ancestors, his little, dark brindled and white marked body crisscrossed the ground like a true hunter, damp nose buried in the grass, drinking in this strong, musky odor.  I laughed at his determination to find the source of this smell.  Had he only looked up, he would have found it.  His slower but more obedient brother actually spotted the deer as they had begun to merge into the trees two hundred yards away, but I managed to keep ahold of his leash.

It took a few seconds to get Beanie’s attention and to slow down his hunt long enough to catch the end of his lead.  By the time I did, the transient guests had vanished.

As we walked home, I couldn’t help wondering if the garden’s residents minded that the intruders trampled with disregard over their eternal beds or whether they enjoyed the animals’ earthy scent and light thumping of pointed hoofs while leaving behind brown digested grass pellets Buster had stopped to gobble up before I could stop him. 

Dogs are so gross at times.

I never got an answer to my inquiry, however.

 

Day One

The other day, a good friend of mine who I complained to about being depressed and anxious having just moved from my home of 29 years, said, “Beth, what you need is a hobby.”  Even in my mentally ill state I had to laugh because during those 29 years I’ve had about 50 hobbies:  quilting (it lasted about six months and I never even finished a single square!), needle-point, preserving jams, cooking like Julia Child, interior design, gardening, croquet, journaling, scrapbooking, beading, making jewelry, dog obedience training, horseback riding--dressage and western, embroidery—just to name a few.  I might have taken up underwater basket weaving if the instructor had been LDS, single, and fairly good-looking.

Yeah, I needed another hobby like I needed another hole or mental illness in my head.

“You’ve got to get out of yourself,” she continued in her older, wiser, sisterly tone I love and hate at the same time.  “The one thing I know about depression is, it gets you wrapped up in yourself.  Do something.  Start writing again, blog, anything--just do it.”

Years ago I had taken up writing, and unlike quilting, I spent ten years writing twenty novels (two of which I’ll never claim I wrote because they are that bad!) and twenty-seven journals.  Being one of my bestest-buddies, Taz had read many of those novels and loved most of them—and I hadn’t even bribed her to like them.  When she said I needed to start writing again, I wondered if I had enough mental and physical energy to do it—believe it or not, it takes a lot of physical effort (the sweat is beading off my brow even as I write this—and it doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that it’s 100 degrees here in Farmington, New Mexico!)

After a couple of weeks of mulling it over—when you’re depressed, mulling is an all-day activity—I decided she was right—dang-nab-her-smart-alec-ness!!

OK, I’ll start writing.  But what about?  I did the novel thing, and I knew there were more stories in there somewhere, but the research and the mental effort thing—well, it would be too much for me.  I got out my copy of “Julie and Julia” not only for inspiration but to drool over the food.  And what came to me?—nothing.  Absolutely nothing!! 

I could blog about cooking, but Julie covered that one pretty well.  I could blog about my life—but everyone does that—even Julie complained that blogging is a “me, me, me” thing.  Who out there in the blogosphere wants to read the depressed ramblings of a 50 year-old-spinster, soon to be ex-school teacher?  I sure didn't.  So what to write about?

Every morning about 8 a.m. I take my two Boston Terriers for a walk.  They loved it, my sister loves it because I am moving instead of lying in bed with the covers over my head.  But the nearest place to take two small dogs that has grass (New Mexico doesn't grow grass, it grows sandy-dust) and shade trees was the cemetery, a half a block away—The Memory Gardens. 

The dogs love sniffing around the grassy edges and on occasion I’d let go of their leashes to chase the ground hogs, ground squirrels—oh, whatever the heck they are—the pesky little rodents, who dig holes around the graves with an abandon a professional ditch digger would appreciate.

The Memory Gardens Cemetery

Then one day on our rounds, I started reading the names on the headstones, the shady benches and the above-ground tombs.  No, I'm not death obsessed.  I'm depressed, not suicidal.  It's just interesting to see people's names, the dates, how old they were when they died.  Hey, we're all going to end up in similar places, and I'm sure someday someone will see my name and have a good laugh at my birthday.

Let me state for the record I don’t have e.s.p.!  I’m not psychic—a psycho, yes, but I don’t see dead people.  OK, occasionally I hear dead people talk to me, which I made the mistake of telling one of my doctors,  He asked if those voices ever told me to hurt myself or slaughter ten or twelve people at a Denny's,  I said of course, not.  He wasn’t LDS, so he doesn't get the still, small voice or the personal revelation thing we Mormons really hang our hats on to.  He looked concerned until I told him the voices were just my dead parents telling me to get out more, find a nice guy and bribe him to marry me.  Since I don't have any money, that didn't work.

One day, on our walk after Mr. Bean and Buster Brown had worn themselves out chasing burrowing rodents in the vacant section of the cemetery, I saw a short, well-dressed Latino woman hovering over a flat grave marker which are so popular with cemetery lawn mowers.

Gathering the loose mongrels, I made my way over to her.  I didn’t know what I was going to say but nosy curiosity got the better of me.

When I neared, she lifted her head, tears in her lovely brown eyes, which were nicely shaded with expensive eye-liner and powder.  She was older than I thought when I saw her from a distance, but there was still a shadow of beauty that must have made her stunning in her twenties.

I muttered something about being sorry for her loss and glanced at the marker which clearly she had purchased three years earlier.

“He was my son,” she explained. 

The chiseled name and dates didn’t give much information about the man--what tiny piece of metal plate can tell a man's entire life? 

“He was a good boy,” the woman said, as if the thirty year old was still the small boy she had chased around a neighborhood before it got too dark to see, had bandaged hundreds of skinned knees, and had spent hours teaching him to ride a two-wheel bike that later became a motorcycle that had killed him.

Then a weird thing happened.  As she talked about her boy, how he had come to visit her, had fixed clogged toiles, and had eaten the elaborate meals she had lovingly created for him, I felt the slightly taller, dark-skinned man standing next to this wonderful petite woman, the memories swirling around her like the red New Mexican dust.

I knew he hadn’t lived the best life—he drank too much—which had caused him to be a bit slow in avoiding the truck he had crashed into—and the drugs he took too often which had used up the money he had always intended to give to his widowed-mother—who usually gave him money for food, gas and rent.  Sometimes that money didn’t go where she wanted it to.

His remorse at his poor decisions surged through me—so did the love he felt for his mother.

We spoke for a little while longer, talking about how her family had come to live here—how I had come to live here.  Then before I could stop myself, I said her son was standing next to her, trying to comfort her.  She cried a little, nodding—she knew it too. 

“It’s not right that a mother should out-live her son,” she said, voice soft, emotional.

I nodded, even though I couldn’t really relate to losing a child—a child who had been part of her heart, her soul, her life.  I think I said something like he loved her very much, but I was trying to keep the dogs from chasing after a lizard.

All she was unable to speak, her heart in her throat. 

I told her she would be in my prayers; she thanked me, and I left, dragging the dogs after me.  By the time I got to the front of the cemetery where the pups paused to sniff at something stinky, I looked back.  The tiny figure stood next to that expensive bronze plaque for another moment, savoring the good parts of her lost son’s life, the might-have-beens as thick as the scent of the flowers she had placed next to his name.  She bowed her well-coifed head, crossed herself and headed for a shiny silver SUV.

After that, I decided I loved walking in the Memory Gardens as much as the dogs.  You meet the most interesting people and hear the most interesting stories—and they don’t always come from the living.