I leave you words: Wandering Buckeye’s historic Liberty Cemetery

The irony does not escape me: I nearly died on the way to the cemetery. 

Though I allowed adequate distance between my Crosstrek and the sedan in front of me, we were driving on the unpredictable west-bound I-10 during rush hour. They put on their breaks suddenly and so did I — glancing into my rear view mirror in that split second to see a semi careening toward me. I calculated a small opening in traffic, swerved into the adjacent lane and sped up. Nothing bad happened to any of us, although my heart was left pounding.

Life is a fragile thing. One minute you’re driving to Buckeye so you can photograph historic cemeteries. The next, you’re nearly crushed on the pavement.

I’m glad to be off the interstate and even more pleased to enter the city’s southern stretch of agricultural land. It’s nearly 7 a.m. in the first few days of October and the wind carries a promise of cooler temperatures. I roll down my window in welcome and turn up the music: Je te laisserai des mots by Patrick Watson. The title translates to: “I will leave you words.” It’s fitting. Writing a story on cemeteries inevitably causes you to wonder about your own mortality and legacy. Questions like, "What will I leave behind when it’s all said and done?"

Twenty minutes later, I stand beneath the archway entrance of Liberty Cemetery on Tuthill Road. The sun has barely crested the mountains, shedding light on the cracked soil and warming my face. I’m dressed in my habitual, funeral-black pants and button-down combination. It’s not intentional, aesthetic or on-theme, it’s what I wear most days. I stand in silence, taking in the fullness of the cemetery before venturing into its specifics. 

I’ve already gathered the history in my preparatory research. According to the American Pioneer & Cemetery Research Project, approximately 364 graves exist in this small cemetery surrounded by agricultural fields. The land was donated in 1885 by Clem Collins, who was its first caretaker. Other caretakers over the years were Junius Brewster through 1953, Cleo Woody through 1956, John Beloat and Bill Meck through 1970 then finally Verlyne Meck and Steven Bales to the present day.

I cross into the cemetery with delicate, humble steps. May I wander here? I’m only curious, I’m only human. Someday my body will also be buried. I’d just like a sneak peek into the past and the future rolled into one, if you don’t mind. The variety of graves strikes me first: There are elaborate, stone memorials and others denoted only by a small, white stake. Soil is mounded in some areas, in others you cannot tell the difference between the grave site and the surrounding desert land. Small, burrowing animals have also found rest alongside the dead, holes scattered throughout the cemetery. I find miniature footprints that appear canine near two graves encircled by dilapidated metal fences. A weathered, fallen wreath lays half buried in the earth. Someone cared for this grave once, but it has since been lost to time. Because there are no names on the markers, my imaginative, storyteller brain speculates.

Who were you? Who am I? Who are we, here together?

I pause at a small grave which reads “In memory of our baby Jackie Eugene Pierce” who lived from Sept. 21, 1935 to Feb. 10, 1936. I think of Gilgamesh who grasped onto the shoulders of his friend Enki, freshly returned from the netherworld, and begged, “Did you see my little stillborn children who never knew existence?” Enki did.

Memory. Memorialization. Observation. Witnessing. Basic human needs.

The need to remember and be remembered is an innately human need. While in undergrad earning my bachelor's degree in psychology, I took a class titled Death and Dying. My professor, a grief counselor, talked about the homo naledi, an ancient pre-human species which is believed to be the first of our kind to bury their dead. Their underground cemetery in South Africa was discovered in 2013 by cavers. I get chills thinking about it: The return to earth, to soil, the ritual of burial. One of my favorite books is “Underland” by Robert Macfarlane. He writes about how going underground is innate to who we are as a species. It is essential for us to ceremoniously mark the passage of time in this manner, including memorializing our dead through burial. We are a species with a psychological need for ritual.

And yet, in modern American culture, we have become so disconnected from this aspect of life. After a week of bereavement leave — for those lucky enough to get it paid — we’re expected to keep contributing to Capitalism. If we mourn “too much” for “too long," we’re diagnosed with Prolonged Grief Disorder. Even so, none of society’s attempts to pathologize or capitalize grief and death will change the fact: These people buried in Liberty Cemetery once lived, just like you and me. They also had hopes, dreams and goals. They loved and lost. They celebrated victories and experienced setbacks. They built lives and raised families on this land and then, one day, they died and then were grieved and buried.

My thoughts are interrupted when a massive farm truck parks at the end of the way. Out steps Mr. Steven Bales, owner of the Bales Hay Sales next door and caretaker of Liberty Cemetery. We wave at one another and smile big. It’s not the first time we’ve spoken, but it’s the first time we’ve met in person. He picks his way through the graves of his ancestors, familiar with the paths, while I carefully walk with light feet that mind the unfamiliar way. The woman who was my mother told me once that you should always walk with light feet around graves, being cautious of where you step. She said the cemetery is a place for silence and reverence. The memory of her comes swift, carried on the chilled edge of the wind where I can barely remember her voice. I leave her there, stepping forward to greet Mr. Bales on the path.

We continue walking together, heading straight to the front row of the cemetery where his family is buried. Mr. Bales and I talked on the phone last week, so this is the tour portion of the conversation. He points out the family matriarch and patriarch first: Mary and William Beloat, who were the first to arrive in Buckeye. 

One of Mr. Bale’s ancestors is also the oldest gravestone in the cemetery—at least the oldest marked gravestone. John Beloat died in 1892 at the age of what we think is 29. His birth date is mostly worn away by wind and time on the gravestone. Death found John Beloat while he was driving a herd of cattle across the Salt River at the Hayden Mill in what is Tempe today. There was no bridge back then and the cold river was high, so John Beloat had to drive his cattle through the water. He caught a cold following the incident, which set into a bout of pneumonia that killed him two weeks later.

Mr. Bales and I stand side by side, gazing down at the grave: The plaid-clad farmer tall as a tree and the journalist in funeral black.

“Such different times,” I say aloud, but then wish I could take the words back in hindsight. 

Certainly, medical care is leaps and bounds more advanced than when John Beloat was alive. Today, he would be in bed for a bit with some medication and then hop on horseback again. Yet, at the same time, the United States medical system provides care in stratification, with basic needs often financially unattainable to many. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 25.3 million Americans do not have health insurance. My friend’s brother almost died when he couldn’t afford his insulin out of pocket. Such different times? I don’t think so. Similar times. History-repeats-itself times.

Mr. Bales and I walk as he explains more of Liberty’s history.  Like most cemeteries from that era, it used to be adjacent to a church. But, some bad weather knocked the building over and it was moved by Liberty School instead, just around the block. Mr. Bales points across the field to where it was relocated. 

“That’s why the cemetery is out there by itself,” he told me on the phone last week. “It had a church there for the first 20-some years and then they picked the parsonage up and moved it.”

That put the cemetery all on its own in the middle of the fields. Back in the day, it was edged with trees which were incredibly difficult to care for, Mr. Bales says. His grandfather tended to the cemetery for some time, and his father remembers having to go out and help clean up the debris before a funeral. It was exhausting up-keep, he says, and his grandfather finally decided to just get rid of the trees.

“People cussed out John Beloat for pulling out the trees,” he says with a laugh. “But I can’t blame him.”

I comment on the number of graves denoted only by a wooden cross or a single post. When I arrived not long before, still alone, I had fixed the first toppled cross I found on the path. However, many of the crosses have collapsed. Guilt pricks when I walk by the fallen markers, but it would take hours to fix them all. Friedrich Perls, the founder of Gestalt Therapy, said guilt is just a cover for resentment. What do I resent as I walk past the toppled, unnamed markers? The wind, the dust, time itself? When I ask why there are so many unnamed, seemingly forgotten graves, Mr. Bales says many of those graves were put there as such.

“You’d come out one morning and see a brand-new, turned grave with dirt mounded up and a wood cross,” he explains. “Nobody knew what happened. And it would probably be one of the farm worker families who couldn’t afford a plot, maybe weren’t connected with a church for burial, and they just took it upon themselves to bury.”

Even many of the named graves, he explains, are no longer attended by relatives. Most of those families are gone now. Even so, the cemetery is still loved. I see evidence of that in the way Mr. Bales talks about its history and gathers the trash blown in on the wind as we walk. During the city’s centennial celebration, he says, many families came together and pitched in money to create the block fence at the entrance. It was designed by someone in the Bales family, an architect.

Our tour is completed. The Sun is beginning to beat upon us and Mr. Bales needs to get back to his crops. I comment on how interesting of an experience it must be to live directly across from one’s ancestors—a continual reminder of those who came before whose lands he continues to cultivate.

Mr. Bales pauses then smiles. “I guess I never really thought of it that way before,” he says. “It’s just normal to me.”

Suddenly, I feel it. A confession of guilt: I’ve never visited my great-grandmother’s grave in Wisconsin. She’s been dead for three years. So, then, I identify the underlying resentment: I wish the people who were my parents had raised me in Wisconsin on the land my family immigrated to from Ireland and Norway four generations ago. Finally, I cannot deny my jealousy: I want what Mr. Bales has. He light-heartedly calls his mother while we’re walking. I have not spoken to the people who were my parents in two years, grieving them while they are still alive. Mr. Bales works the land purchased by his great-grandparents, buried just yards away from us. Mine are buried far away.

I guess my real question for Mr. Bales is: “What does it feel like to have your history laid out before you? How does living next door to the graves of your ancestors contribute to your sense of identity and self?” To know your dead, to integrate your culture and heritage, is incredibly salient for both our individuation and our sense of place in community. We are, after all, a composite of all those who came before us. No “blank-slate” theory here.

I am who I am, and you are who you are because they were who they were.

We can choose what we’d like to do with that fact, but it’s no less true.

At the entrance of the cemetery, Mr. Bales and I thank one another, say goodbye, hope to talk again soon. Before I leave, however, I reach into my tote and retrieve a small jar filled with pine needles native to the Arizona desert. I sprinkle them along a portion of the block wall — my way of thanking and memorializing the dead who rest here, like leaving flowers on their graves.

On the drive home, my thoughts pull once again toward mortality and legacy. I do not believe we should shy away from considering death and so I allow the thoughts to exist in the present moment. I think of Liberty and those unnamed graves. I think of Mr. Bales and his short walk to the cemetery. I think of my ancestors and the simultaneous doses of pain, strength, lessons and wisdom I experience from their stories. In the end, I conclude that while death is inevitable, legacy is malleable. Even those ancestors who died before my lifetime, whose names I do not know, created generational impacts which I experience today. That is their final legacy outliving all else. And then I wonder: What will I leave behind when my days are spent? I do not wish to wrongly connect value with permanence. A legacy is much more than material. Yet, I also wish to leave something behind. In fact, I feel it is an ethical matter. Though my name will inevitably pass into time, the ripple effect of my actions should have a felt positive impact. But, how?

The answer comes quickly: Like the song said, I will leave you words. As a journalist, I have spent the past 12 years documenting the history of humankind as it happens in real time. To be a journalist is to be a historian in that way—an observer, a blot of ink in the story of the world, keeping eyes wide open no matter what. The act of witnessing is the legacy I can leave behind. I will leave you words. And photographs, too. I think of a scene from the movie Civil War, in which the United States descends into self-sabotaging chaos. The protagonist journalist, played by Kristen Dunst, photographs the atrocity. As explosions shatter everything and everyone around her, the shot goes to slow motion and she raises her camera as tears fill her eyes. She observes, witnesses, provides the lives lost with the dignity of documentation. You existed. You were here. Your pain was real. And, when the end came, you were not alone because I saw it all. Here is the proof. 

Margaret Atwood wrote: “All that anxiety and anger, those dubious good intentions, those tangled lives, that blood. I can tell about it or I can bury it. In the end, we’ll all become stories. Or else we’ll all become entities.”

I tattooed an excerpt of that quote on my arm a few years ago, and someday when I’m dead and that patch of tattooed flesh is rotted and disintegrated, my body won’t matter as much as the words I spoke and the ones I wrote. Storyteller and story. We’ll all end up like those people in Liberty Cemetery one day, after all — marked in a couple hundred years by a stone sculpture or a white post in the loose soil, our caskets making the wall of a small animal’s underground den.

But the legacy of the words we spoke and the actions we took — or did not take — outlive our bodies and even our names, creating generational impacts extending far beyond our lives. Maybe you’ll repeat these words I wrote. Maybe you’ll share the stories of Liberty Cemetery and the people buried within. Maybe the story will continue on and on. And, maybe someday when you and I are also dead and buried, a journalist of that era will arrive one October morning to write our names in her notepad, photograph the plot of earth where we made our final rest and sprinkle pine needles on our graves.

Whatever happens, je te laisserai des mots.