The Last Time Anyone Says Your Name
PARALLEL TIRE-WIDTH TRENCHES IN THE EARTH made unmistakable scars across the otherwise unmolested grass. The marks were so out of place, our minds couldn’t immediately make sense of what we were seeing. But then we saw a broken tombstone. Then another. Then another.
This was right before Halloween a few years ago. We followed the tracks up a small hill, then around in a circle, then back out the front gate. Someone had driven through the cemetery—our cemetery—skidding in the early autumn mud, snapping old headstones in every direction. Our incredulity turned to rage.
The Oak Cliff Cemetery, one of the oldest public cemeteries in Dallas, had become a special place for my wife, Tara, and me. The archway of bent trees along the main pathway has been the setting of some of our most important conversations: about our dreams, our families, what we each want out of life for the short time we spend above the soil. The trees in the cemetery are tall, the shrubbery thick, so even though it’s just five minutes from downtown, standing in the middle of the 10-acre plot seems far from any road. In all our time there, we’d rarely encountered another living person, making this intrusion, this act of senseless vandalism, feel like even
