On the Third Anniversary of My Husband's Passing

What does it mean to have a memorial stone? For so many, it means there is a dedicated place where you can honor and visit your loved one. My father’s gravestone is about fifteen feet within one section of the expansive perimeter walkway of Phoenix’s National Memorial Cemetery. My children and I have painted rocks and planted pennies there. I’ve imagined his body underneath the hot dirt, at rest, quieted, and made holy. I’ve commiserated with him when the Arizona temperatures were only comfortable for the deceased. I’ve shed many tears knowing he was right there, out of reach. I’ve also enjoyed wandering the rows and visiting with people I never would have known. 

One of the many ways I was being prepared for Clinton’s passing occurred during a conversation he and I had just a few weeks before this day, three years ago. Clinton loved the outdoors and saw vacant land as even more hallowed than the space a person’s body would occupy in the ground. Our conversation was a short and pleasant agreement about cremation. I don’t even remember why we were talking about it–it very well could have been a subject at the forefront of our minds because of my father’s recent passing. I can see now the many ways my father’s death helped to equip us, and I don’t believe the timing to be coincidental. It is no surprise to me that my father tried to provide for and protect me from his life beyond that place in the ground. I know my children feel the same continuation of love and devotion from their own dad. 

After Clinton was cremated, his father approached me about having a headstone for him at their family’s burial ground in rural Mississippi. Just a few years prior, we all stood within that cemetery’s bounds, and I recorded my father-in-law speaking mostly about his parents, and then about the other relatives buried there. He weaved in and out of the rows, reciting a rich history of every name presented, beautifully and boldly engraved. I remember it being a warm, sunlit day, and it sparked in me a love for the life found in cemeteries. I carry that still.  

I was so focused on honoring the cremation I was certain Clinton wanted, that I never even considered a permanent marker in a cemetery. I imagined we would keep Clinton’s ashes with us–a part of him we would slowly release in some of his favorite places as the years passed. My family placed a bench and a plaque with Clinton’s name near some of his favorite soccer fields; we visit when we’re in the area, and sometimes I go alone. Still, the idea of a headstone in a cemetery among the good company of celebrated lives feels different. 

Even before I understood what Mississippi would come to mean to me, it had already found its way into my life. I’m guessing we’ve all learned that little chant in elementary school about how to properly spell Mississippi. I learned it quickly and was eager to share with everyone I knew. In college, I took second place in the annual spelling bee–my greatest claim to fame that no doubt sprang from the satisfaction of knowing how to spell Mississippi before second grade. I received a family-sized Hershey bar as a runner-up for my linguistic knowledge, yet the reward felt incidental. Somewhere in me, a connection to that part of the South had been softly forming—one that truly came alive when Clinton moved next door to me in 2001.

How do you decide whether or not your name should accompany that of your late husband, gone at 50 years old, beautifully and boldly engraved on a headstone at an honored family cemetery in Mississippi? Would it not undo me, to see my name there, alongside the husband and father with whom I chose to weave my life? My family is mostly from the northeast, and when my parents moved to Wyoming when I was a teen, I knew right away that Wyoming was where I wanted my ashes spread. I never even thought about a permanent place to mark my presence in history, and for my loved ones to visit. 

I said yes to my name resting beside Clinton’s. In a world that has always been shaped by uncertainty and constant change, we made history together. We will exist as forever linked in genealogy reports and in the breakdown of our children’s and grandchildren’s DNA. Our 20 years of marriage deserves a place in this world. When Clinton and I had the conversation about cremation just a few weeks before his passing, I didn’t know that I would feel this way.  

  Some people say Americans don’t know how to die. I tend to agree. We authorize every measure within reach to sustain lives that are no longer comfortable or meaningful, driven by our fear of saying goodbye. Cemeteries, however, show us something else entirely—the art of living. Shakespeare was stirring the pot when he asked, “What’s in a name?” After death, what remains is not the name itself but the presence of a soul—something felt everywhere, unbound by language. And yet, we know the story of Romeo and Juliet precisely because it has been named, written, told, and carried across generations. Cemeteries are those stories, and I can’t imagine a world without each of those names and perfectly-worded, abbreviated, proclamations of life. A cemetery is a place we go not only to honor the dead, but also to listen.