In 2005, following the ailing motor home on a winding Missouri country road, I passed a cemetery where bright artificial flowers at each grave marker rose above the tawny winter lawn. A decade ago, artificial flowers were far from universal grave decor and forbidden in some cemeteries. Now, they’ve spread over cemeteries across the country. Stubborn weeds. Row on row on row, like the tiny flags in Arlington National Cemetery, they erupt from fence to fence, rigid never-dying blooms to companion the dead.

Despondent over this phenomenon, I contemplated writing about it; my outcry of despair at the ugliness of it all. I’m not without compassion for, or understanding of, those marking in this way a life lived. Still, it feels terrible to my eyes, for my spirit.

Over time, I thought of how I would begin to write, not knowing where I might end. I first heard my writer’s voice repeating, Rest in Peace. Rest in Peace.

Rest in Peace? That formerly consoling benediction mocked me.

Rest in Peace? Denied the serenity of the landscape overhead moving through its seasons? Surrounded by an eternity of garish fading plastic, or a litter of cloth petals fluttering on the grass? How could the body’s partnership with earth’s decay and rebirth peacefully commence while the distracting slower cycle of fossil to oil to plastic to trash persisted in one’s resting place? What a brutal visual joke.

Then I’d hear that resounding communal response, You won’t care, stupid! You’ll be gone. You’ll have entered black Oblivion or be with Creation and what does it matter? It comforts the living. That may be. Some of the living. But I’m heartsick. Give me real flowers—even nature’s wildest, weediest obliteration.

What triggers this melancholy is more than my sense of aesthetics. Those acres of plastic flowers metaphor the acres of storage units proliferating everywhere, monuments to the fact that you can’t take it with you, but we’re trying. Flea markets, tag sales and dumpsters full of plastics, roadways littered with it. I'm part of all that, minus the storage unit. And part of a culture that watches and listens, rather than participating in "real life." Bereft of more than a visual connection to nature.

In the past few years, I’ve come across cemeteries that explode with color and decoration. I’ve seen them in Alaska, Arizona, New Mexico and lately, in Texas. Most often Spanish-speaking or indigenous people are buried there, under dusty desert or grassy lawns. What I’ve noticed about these burial grounds is the intense personalization of each grave. Many of the rules of typical North American cemeteries and memorial parks are broken. In some places the soothing mathematical order of headstones, or the spacious vista in parks with ground level plaques is replaced by an anarchy of crowded white picket fences and crosses. These are constructed of wood or concrete, more accessible and less majestic than granite or marble.

Some sites are bordered with brick or stone; the white picket fence. Plastic and cloth flowers flutter in the wind, statuettes, balloons, angels and toys are arranged obviously as a loving tribute.

This winter I was drawn to the Cemeterio San Antonio De Padua, set back from the busy highway, in the South Texas Gulf. Information was printed on a container at the entrance to the cemetery.

CEMETERY VISITING
NO VISITORS AFTER DARK
CONSTRUCTION & LOCATION OF CURBS MONUMENTS TREES &
SHRUBS MUST BE APPROVED BY A REPRESENTATIVE OF THE ORGANIZATION BEFORE WORK IS STARTED
WHEN CLEANING PLOTS PLEASE REMOVE YOUR OWN TRASH
CEMETERY PLOTS ARE $200
PLEASE KEEP CLEAN & KEEP OFF MEDIUM
FOR MORE INFORMATION CALL THE FUNERAL HOME

Spread before me was an array of monuments marking passed souls. There, in abundance, were the flowers I so despised. There, in every direction, I was greeted by anything but anonymity and peaceful order. Instead, I felt the loving presence of families and friends. I saw grave sites marked by a simple rough cross, traditional monuments, and those built and bordered and decorated with such generosity of figures and flowers that I could feel the love of the living calling out to the dead. I could see their grave decorations reflecting the comforts of home. Welcome. Hi there...bye there. I moved from grave to grave, feeling stories from marker and furnishings, taking pictures, carefully trying to avoid walking on graves, some so close that it was impossible. The petals of cloth flowers were scattered underfoot, bright in the sun, glowing from the shade. Some marks of the lives passed remained simple. A rock, a cross, some gravel. No visible sign of great love or perpetual maintenance. But the tatters of cloth petals lift and move across all the graves, then lie fluttering in the wind.

I walked into the Chapel, and at the feet of the saint was a large black plastic bag. I noticed something emerged from the right side of the open bag. Something black-haired. I turned away and walked back to the car, imagining that someone had dragged the corpse of a lab-like dog to a sacred place. Who? Why? Who would be responsible for burying it? These questions remain unanswered, along with the image of the large black shape before the saint and child.

I understood that places like this could be comfortable to celebrate the Day of the Dead. Here, the interactions between living and dead were palpable. And the longing. The waiting chairs were testimony. I felt part intruder, part welcomed guest. I felt strangely soothed. Rather than seeing the hierarchy of the largest angel or piercing obelisk rising over the modest stone, I saw evidence that people were able, themselves, to control and decorate a small space to mark a large loss. That spirit of engaged participation I had needed time and again. After attending a funeral for someone beloved but inadequately celebrated, whose life story was less important than the connection to her church, I felt a fierce desire to—at the very least—throw some dirt down onto her coffin. In the end perhaps, the comfort of creation is to be found in the little altars at home, and in the heart.

Still, I needed to witness what these strangers had created without pretense, and to speak of how their efforts moved me. The last time I went to take more pictures, I felt grateful that I was alone in that pursuit, until I left, and saw the sign highlighted by a yellow square that I’d missed before. Smile, you’re on camera. Which reminds me again, I can see, I can speculate, but I can’t draw conclusions. I don’t know the whole story. My eyes, again and again, feed my emotions first.

“CEMETERY PLOTS ARE $200”

“HI THERE!...IN LOVING MEMORY OF OUR SON, OUR PRECIOUS ANGEL...
DEARLY MISSED. BYE THERE!
THANKS FOR VISITING...”

The baby buried here died on his date of birth.

There is a stack of plastic chairs leaning against the tree here.