La Jara

Saturday/Sunday

I don't know if it was his wish or a bit of inspiration gathered elsewhere, but my aunt wanted to have my uncle's ashes buried out in La Jara, on a bit of wild land that his family owns. Yesterday, Dave and I, along with my mother, followed my aunt and her son and grandson out there to meet up with my uncle's large, somewhat unwieldy family.

My aunt led us to a small campsite near a creek where the family used to camp and we helped set up to have lunch there. My aunt had made most of the food, a spread of sandwiches, chips, salad, and so on, and we all sat down under the trees to eat.

After lunch, Dave and I took a very abbreviated walk up the road. There's been some rain this season, so there were lots of wildflowers in bloom.

The kids--a group of six or seven, ranging in age from about eight to thirteen--headed off in various groups, the girls carrying tote bags to house the treasures--sticks and interesting rocks and bones--that they were sure to collect. 

Things get done at a different pace in the mountains, I think--or maybe it's just the natural pace of my uncle's family--so by the time my mother was ready to leave, almost four hours after we arrived, my uncle's brothers were just starting to talk to my aunt about where a good place to bury my uncle would be.

I'm sure that wherever they ultimately decided will be a good spot, as you can see from the pictures that Dave and I took on our walk.

We drove home--Dave actually drove the hour and a half each way--and my mom dropped us off at the casita before heading on her way.

The previous night's meat fest had left me feeling pretty puffy from all the sodium, so I had drunk about two gallons of water throughout the day trying to de-puffify myself. It started to help a little by the time I went to bed (incredibly early, since I hadn't really slept the night before). I took a bit of benadryl, too, when I got up in the night and that helped me sleep until almost 6:00 a.m. this morning.

I woke up to a gray, somewhat windy day. The wind has been banging the gate around, making the cats a bit jumpy. They both climbed into bed with me--a process that takes awhile as they are like the touchy leaders of hostile nations negotiating border disputes when they are forced to share the same space.

I went outside to try to prop the gate closed. Over time, the rain has caused the wood to swell, so the gate won't latch. To keep it closed, I used a heavy, plastic, five-gallon bucket of plaster casts of my family's faces left from when I was making masks over a decade ago. The faces at the top of the pile that greeted me are familial, familiar, and many are gone from my life, my grandmother who died almost ten years ago, my younger brother the same.

What do you do with such things--the casts, I mean? I suppose I've chosen to expose them to the elements and let time take its toll, as it always will.

I came inside and negotiated my own space with the cats.