My mother�s ashes lie in an unmarked grave, in a cemetery lost in one of the suburbs pockmarking the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex.

She would�ve liked to have been laid to rest on a cliff somewhere along the Pacific Coast, somewhere with a view of the ocean.

Instead, her gravesite sits within a dying neighborhood. Crumbling craftsman houses sit like rows of mourners along pitted streets. I just know that 100 years from now, new neighborhood residents will �discover� this abandoned black graveyard, with its crumbling monuments to folks who lived lives long and short, gentle and hard.

I wish I could have given her the ocean.

She shares a plot with her brother, her mother, her father and her paternal grandparents. That leaves no one to visit her, even if they could find the unmarked spot.

No one except my sister and me, and I haven�t been back. For my part, I think it�s guilt.

For four years, I�ve been struggling to come up with words for her epitaph. I�m her daughter, I�m a writer, I loved her, and I can�t find the words�

I�m closer though, I think.

In the way I can smell a coming rainstorm, I can feel the words churning in my mind. A building � yet still mute � pressure that soon will tumble forth in a torrent that aptly captures who she was, how much she was loved, how much she�s missed. I can feel it.

Maybe one day, I�ll be able to give her the ocean, or even give her to the ocean.

Or a least, mark her grave with a fitting tribute, a headstone of marble or granite, something that will gently soften, fade and wear away with the passage of time � a monument marking not so much the passing of the dead, as it does the grief of the living.

---

other Austin stories	all my yesterdays	about me	send to a friend	e-mail andy
Get emailed when I update! Enter your email address: Powered by NotifyList.com Diaryland