June

It's June. My friends and family have learned that something is different about June, but they don't remember exactly how poignant it is until I start to cry; every freaking day! Like Kir cries in August.

J.D. is taking me to Piedmont in the morning. I know I have the right guy when visiting the grave of his predecessor is at the top of his I-want-to-do list.

Brent has been reminding us for a few weeks that June is approaching. Whenever Brent visits, he leaves the door to his/my shadow box open. He seldom visits Kristin because her shadow box door stays shut. But when I especially need him, or when the lilacs start blooming, he visits me. Sometimes he visits when I'm not there and J.D. quietly closes the door behind him. J.D. always tells me that he stopped by.

The lilacs are starting to bloom with this year's big rain, so we are headed to Piedmont tomorrow. This is how it goes and I've finally started to enjoy the trip, even if I spend hours in tears. We get up early, I skulk around while I get ready, Deacon knows it's Piedmont day so he's very respectful. He doesn't get too excited because he's the only dog that gets to go.

I dress. Hold back tears. Smile at J.D. as he loads up water, a blanket made for dirt, a jacket, a leash, a water bowl and me. We used to take Arial. She died, too. She is the only tie between Brent and J.D. except our children. She is now buried in a box outside the cemetery fence just east of Brent's headstone. That was J.D.'s idea. Of course it is a perfect place for her.

We drive and talk about the weather and try to spot eagles through the Wasatch Back, then around, Coleville, UT, we get quiet. I look at the fortifications in the red hills that the Mormons built as they fought back Johnston's Army between Coleville and Evanston. Brent told me the story the first time we went to Piedmont together. I try to remember it and I've done an injustice to the story as I've tried to tell J.D. about it. Once we stopped at the historical marker, but it was deft of adequate description.

Sidebar:

Kristin and I used to do a monthly trip to Piedmont. About the time we reached the historical marker, I had gone beyond my 50-mile limit and had peed my pants, so we’d pull off the highway and she’d read the marker, again, while I washed out my pants with a bottle of water. She’d tie my pants to the luggage rack with my belt and they’d flap all the way to Piedmont. Truckers especially enjoyed my pants flapping as I sat butt naked driving to the Leroy exit. That’s a good June memory.

There is a little family cemetery, only for the Byrnes. Brent's mother's family. Moses Byrne settled the town and named it after the place in Italy that his wife was from. Piedmont, Italy.

J.D.'s Dad, Mario, is from Piedmont, Italy. Another example of my serendipitous life. You too, are connected to me.

The cemetery is on a hill that you can see for miles from every spot in the small valley. Our adult kids built a sturdy fence around it to keep the free-range cattle from destroying more headstones than they already had. The fence should last for years. It hardly seems worn after 14. It's been built for the duration. Nothing's getting in that doesn't belong in the sacred space. We even keep weeds out.

While I sit beside the headstone, I feel vulnerable. The entire world can see me. I'm a misplaced comma bent against squares of wood fence and livestock wire and sandstone. And the wind blows through everything on me. My hair separates, and strands release, giving building ropes for bird's nests. And if I speak, the wind takes the words and packages them up tight and saves the song, or the cry, or the scream, for someone else.

Sitting there on top of everything that means heaven to me, J.D. lets me dissolve into depression; grief; longing, and pretends it doesn't bother him. I WILL NEVER RECOVER, so he accepts it. When we get there the wind blows. Always. Sometimes the new hay shoots look green, then grey, as they sway against the morning wind. Last year, a storm rolled in and mixed dirt drops with my tears. J.D. could tell which was which. He suffers through the ordeal and says he loves me no matter what. And he does. And I love him no matter what too. Knowing that gets me through the silent ride home.

I try to reason with Brent. Then I end up shouting. I never fought with him, except in his absence, so it's easy to get the upper hand. I always win because he died. Who does that to someone they love?

I pull the small shoots of weeds from around his headstone and roll my fingers across the part that says "Kelly Crompton, Born April 19, 1959 — Died..." That date won't be filled in because only direct family members are allowed to be buried there now. I will miss him when I die.

Then after the rain and wind or an hour passes, J.D. and Deacon cross the little hill where he's feigned looking for arrowheads. I can sense him walking back. I always know he will come back. He stands at the cattle gate to the cemetery and the wind quietly asks if I'm ready.

"Yes,” but he only sees my nod coming windward.

Once, after a long hour when I thought they should have been back by then, I day-dreamt that J.D. and Deacon never came back. I waited. Waited! Until it was obvious they were dead as well. I imagined I scooted down the cemetery hill until my ankles and palms were bloody nubs. More bloody than scooting from the bedroom to the garage ramp. More bloody than scooting from the front yard to the garage ramp. I COULD NOT SEE HIM! Scooting down the hill only made me further away from where he was supposed to be. The world was too vast and my small accessible square of earth was just what I was currently scooting on. I dwelled on it too long, the thought made me frantic — for him, and for me. Grief squared, is intolerable. I do not want him to die there! Nor me.

Then after the right amount of pause, I see him walking carefully across the eons-old rocks and dodging the barely blooming sage. He meets up to the deeply-rutted, unkempt road and I start to cry again. He thinks it is because it is a “Brent” day. I cannot live without him, too!

He rigs the self-closing gate so it stays open and trudges up the hill. It is short but steep. I try to ignore its pitch because it means frailty – in both of us. He steadies himself as he prepares to lift me from the ground. What was once a light 100-pound person has grown heavier through the years. He heaves, albeit quietly, and manages an Olympic lift from ground to chest. He carries me to the truck, then goes back to get the blanket, water, and jacket I've shed from the morning heat. I can see that he pauses longer each year and I know that he worries that there will be a day when he cannot heave me any longer.

Sometimes I leave a pinwheel tucked in next to the granite to catch the breeze; most often l do not. Usually, the day feels too sacred to leave anything. I always leave a kiss for Janis on Craig’s headstone and pray that I will never have to bury another lover. Today, I cannot bear to bury another person. God, please give me strength to outlast my parents so they do not have to bury another child.

An image that haunts me is the collapse of a strong child as she watches with a cocked head while her husband hears that her father dies. She runs for as long as her lungs can work. Then bends at the knees and sobs.

Tiffany has given Piedmont valley its wind. I have a series of pictures of her; then her and Chris; then the two and Merrick... and when I think of Tiffany and Piedmont, I can almost hear the "Woooowww," that a hollow, rounded mouth makes when imitating the scary woof of wolves. The valley is saying something deep and sweet and longing, like six-o' clock in Wheeler Canyon when the wind blows down sunset, and the musky odor of wild animals blend with dinner sounds.

Once, I looked down from 30,000 feet as I flew over Wyoming, and I could see the small checkbox of graveyard. I remembered the names on the tall white sandstone marker that listed Moses and his children. But looking at the blank, un-inscribed names on those small, tiny, blank white markers felt intrusive. There is nothing there but your own bare story for everyone to see. And as I looked down, I knew I wasn't meant to see it from that angle. You have to be there to understand the gravity of connection with those that died without names. Even with the names engraved for me, I was not close enough to the earth to feel the grit of a cemetery visit.

I've sent people there; friends and family and when they come back, they think they understand — barely — what it means to be there. Reverence. That's the only place I've ever felt it. A cathedral in Saint Sebastian, Spain, built in 300 A.D. gave me the closest feeling of reverence that Piedmont does. I ran my fingers along the stone threshold in the cathedral a year after Brent was buried. I can still imagine how my fingerprints felt on both stones.

I have a piece of art from a best friend who shushed her kids at the cemetery as they made a graphite etching of Brent's headstone. When I got the etching, it startled me. We are etched together, as husband and wife, but not together, now.

Brent and I made love for the first time on a hill in Piedmont; I wore his shirt. After he died, I learned that other couples had done the same. It's a place that you are yourselves. And that happened to be the best we were at the time. Sometimes I think about that day, but not always; and never when J.D. is there. We have our own places that can’t compare.

Piedmont is a ghost town, full-fledged, registered ghost town. The boards are warped in the house that Fae was born in. We used to have family reunions in it, but it's dilapidated and unsafe except to poke your head or one foot and a camera into. It's magic in a very small scale that Lake Powell or the Grand Canyon is magic. People without a connection may call it lovely, sweet or interesting. But to family, and in-laws, it's magic and intriguing and the stories are worth repeating. There are headstones that just say "Child - Killed by Indians."

There are other headstones that give you the full lineage from Moses to Brent, or to Craig, the next brother that died prematurely. And Fae tells stories that grow or diminish as she grows old. The family keeps the stories alive. I'm only part of the family now and I have my own family, and J.D.'s family that must be kept too. Now that I know that my great-grandfather was the Garfield County Attorney, I have a responsibility to tell his story along with many, many others.

There are tiny purple flowers and a wild rose bush above Brent's grave. There are tacky plastic flowers that a frugal generation leaves because plastic lasts. Our kids leave pinwheels and painted wooden sunflowers. Bree left a pointed flower 15 years ago that the chipmunks have chewed until it is round, but it is still there and it's the most beautiful thing in the valley because she didn't need to leave a calling card with it. It is Bree sublime. She has left her spirit there — just for her Dad.

I leave tears and water for the itsy, bitsy purple blossoms that grow in the niche between the cement headstone and dry spring earth. And I leave my fingerprints. One year I realized that I had nearly scuffed off the ridges on my index finger from tracing "Clifford Brent" engraved in the granite.

The family collects rocks. I think all families collect rocks. At least all the families I've gathered in 52 years collect rocks. J.D and I took a rock laden with lichen and cracked; its parts are separated just enough to run a piece of wheat through the gap. But so close together that it looks like only a tight black thread runs through it. It is part of many pieces that line our driveway and sometimes I go to it and smile because I know where it has been. I wonder if J.D. does that too.

There are a few people who have taken a charred stone from the blown-up charcoal kiln. I know because I see them in the flower beds at their houses — it is sacred ground that begs to be shared in daily lives. I do not disapprove. I hope to see part of a rock wall in Idaho one day that has Brent and Craig ashes on it.

A few highlights of Piedmont are here, but you'll never catchthe magic unless you go there.

http://www.ghosttowns.com/states/wy/piedmont.html
http://www.wyomingheritage.org/piedmontKilns.html
http://thecardonfamilies.org/catherine_cardon_families.htm
Google Piedmont, WY for more links.