Real Estate

We’ve driven by several memorials on this trip. Many of them were on the interstates. Others were on back highways and a few on country roads. Some had crucifixes. Others had wreathes. Sometimes notes were attached, though I couldn’t read them while moving.

I remember one memorial very well: We took a detour on one of the varicose turn-offs while campsite hunting on Last Dollar Road. Tucked away about a tenth of a mile was this tiny makeshift memorial. I crouched next to it. A man had lost his lifelong companion: a woman who lived between forty and fifty years. A small votive, some plastic flowers, and a pewter statue of St. Peter were all bound together with a small flowered garland. 

I read the note and it made me sad. 

I wish I could remember exactly what it said. 

It had something to do with the man’s soul now missing a piece. 

I just remember that the lady died in 2011. 

Everything struck me at once: the beauty of mountain we were on, the isolation, the cold wind whipping through the Aspen and Pine. I stared at the engraved and hyphenated dates, dates which were now bound by parentheses; two finite points on a seemingly infinite line. It was then that I felt this man’s grief. I felt compassion for a man whom I had never even met; I felt the weight of his loss and I felt it immediately.

We climbed back into the car and I was silent for a moment. “This is a very specific place” I thought.

And I continued to think about it.

“Place becomes specific when a memory is involved,” I thought to myself. This place is specific because this man placed his memorial here. Even if we don’t know the people or the stories involved we still understand the symbol here. I understand that this place has been specified by many memories.

I also understand that this place has been specified by one final memory, and I understand the symbols within this symbol, too. The votive for light, the saint for guidance and favor, the dates for linear time when this person existed, the flowers for youth, life, respect, beauty, comfort, rest, and so on. I also understand the parentheses. But why here? Why tucked away into the side of this particularly remote mountain? Why here at this very spot?

Maybe this is where they met, on a backcountry excursion through sheer coincidence.

Maybe this is where they would sneak off as teenagers to figure out the world and to make love.

Maybe this is where he realized that the two of them undoubtedly shared one soul.

Maybe this is where they decided that they truly loved one another.

Maybe this is where they decided to get married.

                                                or,

Maybe this is where she told him that she was sick.

And I thought about this for a while.

But the drive down was beautiful: full of twists, turns, switchbacks, and overlooks. Exponentially pastoral, idyllic, bucolic, and so on. Vistas and views that a person couldn’t quantify. And back there, tucked away on the side of a mountain was this place were gravity felt a little stronger just for a second.

Yeah, we’ve seen lots of memorials on this trip, but this one was very specific.

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