Just down the road from us is the Binghamton Cemetery founded by Mormons in 1899. The Mormons were an early Anglo presence in Arizona. They established a farming community by the Rillito River and named it Binghamton. The farming dried out as water became increasingly scarce, but there is still a Mormon church and community in town, and probably a dozen grave markers bearing the Bingham name. |
| "TO BE OPENED BY GOD" |
I like to take Nazar the Wonder Dog there for walks because I can let him wander off leash and do what dogs do — smell things. The graveyard is a popular hangout not only for the occasional dog-walker and dead people, but also for local packs of coyotes.I like to go there and reflect on the graves.
For a year or more our morning walks have been in the Finger Rock Wash, so it was with fresh eyes that Nazar and I recently wandered back into the graveyard. In addition to the fresh mounds of dirt evidencing the internment of new residents, there was evidence of upscale improvements.
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| "HANDCART PIONEER" Contrary to wagon trains depicted in Western movies, most people could not afford a team of horses or a covered wagon. They pulled or pushed handcarts. |
The main dirt driveway and the side ones that organize jumbles of graves into lines and rectangles had been marked with decorative metalwork street signs. The main driveway had been named Bingham Lane, suggesting the others were also named after illustrious pioneer Mormon residents: Webb Lane, Young Lane, Hardy Lane, Abegg Lane, and Farr Lane.Additional land had been cleared of sage and creosote brush and a fifth side driveway, Nelson Lane, leveled out. Apparently, there is ongoing demand for cemetery plots.
Despite the recent improvements, and despite a sign by the gate warning that grave decorations require approval, the cemetery remains major funky.
The place is delightfully littered with sandy soil, desert scrub, the occasional mesquite, palo verde and acacia tree, plastic flowers, faded US flags and Christmas decorations, children's toys, and shiny marbles, souvenirs, mirrors and baubles like the trinkets Europeans used to trade for ivory and animal hides. There are lots of whimsical sentiments carved in stone. The overall effect is very organic, not at all as sterile and unreal as the usual manicured, regimented, restfully green, formal cemetery. Binghamton is a cemetery on a much more human level. Consequently it is a very inviting place in which to wander and ponder. |
| "MY IMMORTALITY IS IN MY BOYS" |
There is a joke about how to make God laugh. Tell Him your plans.
People generally do not deal well with reality. There are people, many people, who have a hard time with a reality that is impermanent, spontaneous and unpredictable, so they box it inside a conspiracy theory. Religion ends up catering to such people who want simple answers to questions that have none, at least no explanation that can be expressed in words.
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| Grave markers with one date. |
Living people bring many different perspectives to a graveyard. Some bring sadness as they visit partners, parents, siblings and children. Even a casual graveyard visitor, like I am, experiences the unavoidable sense of residents who have been forgotten. Some mounds are marked "unknown." Others are untended and suggest abandonment. Understandably, we want lives with meaning, and to be remembered in life and beyond is evidence of meaning.
In Binghamton, it seems there are too many buried children. Some, sadly, have but a single date on their headstones. One was stillborn. Others died as teenagers or young adults. Their graves are the most tended and decorated.
Graveyards express our ideas and hopes about eternity. Most residents in Binghampton are of the Mormon persuasion. There are lots of Mormon beliefs carved in stone.Mormons have very literal ideas about eternity. The Mormon Church teaches that its services are indispensable for a happy eternity. Followers are not just married, they are "sealed" in Mormon temples. Families, like a day in the life of Bill Murray's character in the movie Groundhog Day, are forever. Except even in the movie the repetitive loop ended. For Mormons, there is no such relief. According to their beliefs, they are stuck with family forever. Come some happy time after death, we all get back together again — at least those "sealed" by the Mormon Church — just like before.
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| One down, one to go for eternity, |
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| "Dear Mommie, we love you and we will see you in heaven" "Good bye for just a little while" |
"Forever young" is commonly carved on the graves of children. They are stuck in time. Residents whose lives spanned six, seven or eight decades are not marked with the sentiment, "Forever old" or "Forever deathly sick". Who decides at what age we live out an eternity? And, if your family is today's normal, why would you want to spend eternity with childhood traumas and sibling rivalries?
The thing is, even in Mormon graveyards there is evidence that eternity is not as tidy as a Mormon "seal" would suggest.
There a many grave sites set aside in eternity for the "sealed" couple. One spouse dies and the final date is chiseled into the joint grave marker. The temporarily surviving spouse is already named and birth dated. There are spaces for the corpse and the date of death.Except, it seems, that sometimes the surviving spouse has a change of heart. The most obvious example is the modernistic sandstone grave marker for Mr. and Mrs. Mason. Sandra Beth lies buried. We do not know the name of her husband. His name was chiseled out and his plot lies empty. Did he find a new mate for eternity and remarry? One can imagine Mr. Mason stealthily entering the cemetery with hammer and chisel, then going to work on his side of the "Mason" marker.
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| The Durham grave, 2018 |
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| The Durham grave, 2007 |
Their's is a beautiful site. There are only two hills in the cemetery. One is reserved for the U.S. flag and a couple of park benches. The Durhams' joint burial plot is on the other hill.
A decade ago when I first was wandering around Binghampton Cemetery, I saw the simple plots where Armond was buried in 1981 and Juanita's site was waiting for the inevitable. Whoever decorated the grave had planted a saguaro cactus at the head of each grave site. What I saw a decade ago was that the saguaro planted by Armond's buried head had withered and died. The one waiting for Juanita was healthy and growing.
Since then, a groundskeeper or whoever has cleared out the dead saguaro, and Juanita's saguaro has continued to flourish. It has grown unusually tall and bears many arms.
Now maybe those two saguaros were already growing when Armond was buried. Juanita's saguaro certainly seems older than thirty-seven years. Typically saguaros begin growing branches after fifty or seventy years.
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| "GONE TO THERAPY" |
Regardless whether a Durham or God planted the saguaros, there is no escaping the observation that the fate of the two saguaros is reflected in the death and life of the Durhams. Armond is dead and buried. Juanita was nine years younger than Armond and was only forty-three when he died. If she is still alive, she is eighty-three. Maybe her time has not yet come to be buried beside Armond.I prefer to think that after Armond died, she went on to live a happy and fruitful life, just like her saguaro.
