Unknown

The cemetery in the ghost town of Terlingua is a haunted place. As I walked around it the other day, I was struck by the large number of unmarked graves, not unmarked as in anonymous at burial, but unmarked because the names on the old wooden crosses had simply worn off and there was no one around to refresh them and keep the dead men’s names alive. Felt really sad.

There was just pile after pile of flat rusty rocks and desiccated, broken gray wooden crosses slowly sinking into the earth or getting covered by dust. There were a few metal markers with names and even a few traditional stone monuments. But mostly it was old graves, some nearly flat, some with mausoleums built of stone, some decorated with assorted beads and glass candle holders, all with no names.

Earlier in the day we had visited a site with old grinding stones and petroglyphs, nearly 14,000 years old. Markings of people who had been busy living and making notes about their life and their landscape, but anonymous none the less. And it all made me wonder about the drive we seem to have to make a name for ourselves because in the dead at Terlingua and the markings on the stones it’s obvious time is the great eraser and dust to dust is the truth of the matter. And on that dark thought, I’m going out to watch a sunrise.

John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver's Tale