A little background. My girlfriend lost her Grandmother, who had raised her in large part, last year in January. She and I got togather in February after some three years of flirtation and now we're living together.

She's been really emotional lately, very fragile, and it hurt me to see her like that. I couldn't really hit on it, exactly, but we figured out (through screaming, crying, and begging) that she was still hurting over her Grandmother's death.

I have a bit of experience in this regard--I lost Mom, Grampop, and Dad within four years (age 12-15) and others along the way. I learned the hard way, sometimes to make the hurt stop is to hurt so much you don't feel it anymore--so we went to visit her Grandmother today.

It's a lovely, very old cemetary on Yale Blvd. here in Albuquerque. Three cemetaries, actually, all conjoined but seperated by walls. Two primarily Jewish cemetaries to the north, and a general denomination/public one to the south. After saying "hello" and cleaning up a bit around her grandparents' we strolled off to hunt other family.

That part of the family is in the older section. Dates on the markers run from 1860s thru 1920s mainly. Soon we saw how much time has gone by.

The first marker we saw overturned wasn' all that big, but solid granite. We tried, but only managed to straighten it a bit for the repair crew to come later. And soon it became too much too many--it's like the story of the soldier seeing the dead child and crying, but by the time he sees a whole school slaughtered, he's numbed to it.

Dozens forsaken, motorbike tracks through the sections reserved for children and stillbirths, markes strewn about as if it were a game. An above-ground reliquary pulled open with broken glass littering it. Stones knocked over and trampled, one missing a chunk but now laying on the boundary wall of a family plot.

It grabbed me in the chest and made it hard to breathe.

Why?

Oh, I'm not one to cry "sacrilige!" and light torches and grab the nearest farm implement and form a mob. I understand two somewhat conflicting truths: the people there are not going to rise up anytime soon, but these places and monuments are for those left behind.

I guess it's easier to go after people who died a century ago--fewer are left to raise hell about things being destroyed there. Which only makes these vandals cowards to boot. But why do it at all? You need to destroy something, there's plenty worth ruining in  this world. I could mention a few, but I don't like the potential of jail time; at the least, go smash a rock in the woods--it's more of a challenge and nobody, nohow, gets hurt.

How do you raise such a beast? What level of apathy or torture creates someone who wants to injure the grieving? I can't fathom it.

Just as we were about to leave, there was one last clue. An unamed soldier, WWI, laid in on the edge of another plot. Star of David carved on the front, Swastika painted on the back.

Are we still that base so far along in "progress?"

Makes me want to go hunting and gathering.