My entire life, I collected rocks. Big, small, it didn’t matter what size. I had no real reason to collect them, just that they spoke to me, and I’d put them in my pockets or a bucket and write the date on them. They went into storage. Over the years, the collections grew heavier.
I collected rocks from every place I visited or lived. I’d be walking, and I could feel the pull of a rock, saying, “Hey... ME! Come get ME!” I didn’t even have to see it at the time. It might be off to the side of the highway, path, etc.
Because of these journeys, I had rocks from pretty much every state west of the Mississippi—and a few others east of it.
In 1999, I was out walking my dog, a Chow-Chow named Rufus, when a large black German Shepherd dog attacked me. He was on the opposite side of a four-lane road, tied in the back of a parked truck in a restaurant parking lot. His owner was inside having a meal. He jumped out, ran across the road, and bullied my dog, who, wisely, lay down in submission.
I held my hand out to him. Not to pet, but so that he could smell my scent, that I meant no harm. He licked me, then leaned against my hand. Suddenly, with no change in posture, no difference in breathing, tail, etc., he just bit my hand and compressed the carpal tunnel in my wrist.
A police officer witnessed the attack and had the dog impounded. That Shepherd had already been involved in several similar incidents, having attacked and bitten others before.
It healed fine, except my hand often still goes numb. The owner paid me $2,000.00 so I wouldn’t insist on having the dog put down.
I bought a cheap, beat-up Chevy S-10 pickup, loaded everything we owned in it, then left the state. I had decided to reinvent my life again. I actually have done that often in my lifetime.
So off we went—hubby Carl, Boo the cat, and I—setting out for vacation together. Visiting friends and family. Stops in MO, CO, and NM, where we visited my sister Cherry’s grave. She was born and died in 1961.
My parents were involved in an accident, and Cherry was born at barely seven months—very premature. No, I never really met her. My father and I were the only ones at the burial. My mother was still in the hospital.
I don’t know how to explain how she has always seemed to be connected to me.
Her grave is in the oldest section of the cemetery in downtown Albuquerque, NM, which has three sections. The current part is beautifully kept up. Green grass, sparkling headstones, fresh flowers on graves.
The next section is a bit older, the stones less shiny, but still some fresh flowers. Most are the plastic variety, though. It still has grass, but it’s a bit sparse in places where the sand shows through the sod.
Then there is the area where Cherry is buried. No grass, just sand. Headstones have fallen over and sunk into the sandy soil. Tumbleweeds are caught between them or in long tufts of stray grass that manage to find enough moisture to grow for a short time.
The entire area is covered in trash, broken liquor bottles, food wrappers, and even used needles litter the ground everywhere.
Cherry was one of the last to be buried in that area before they opened the next section. It didn’t look like that when she was laid to rest. But over the years, it had been neglected in favor of newer versions of eternal resting places that had been opened.
But no one remembered the people buried there; no one visited even once a year now. I hadn’t been there since around 1970, when my mother took me to visit Cherry’s grave on her birthday. Even then, the grounds were losing grass, and the sand was showing through as the new lots were kept up.
During my visit in 1999, I cleaned off her grave, pulled the tumbleweeds out, and swept the top of the grave smooth. There was no name on her gravestone, only a number. She was in a small portion where babies were buried.
After I cleared her grave and sat there talking with her, I realized I had buckets and buckets of rocks from all the places I had visited in my life.
I had my husband bring me the first one. I started taking them out, one at a time. As I placed them around her grave, outlining its boundaries, I told her the story of each stone. Where it was found, why I had been there, and what made it special to me when I picked it up.
In the end, after two rows outlining her grave, I placed the prettiest stones—the polished ones, and the ones I had bought, not necessarily found. These spelled out her initials, CLW, in the center of the grave.
