new desert

I just got back from Tucson. I guess things have really changed there. All the adobe houses have been torn down and its just a strip mall after strip mall. But then, when you get out into the desert a little more you realize why people fall in love with it. It was incredibly still and clean and everything was blossoming, all the cacti and little bushes full of yellow and red flowers.
We had a ceremony for my great grandmother so we could finally bury her ashes. She died in 1996, actually. But I think my grandmother just has been too involved and also perhaps a little attached to having her mom around. So we had a ceremony at this weird old cemetery. A huge highway basically cut right through it. The pastor never knew anyone from our family and my uncle kept calling him chester the molester because he was really like a Flanders or something. Then the funeral director was bizaar. He had No Personality. He just stood there with his arms crossed under this tree and stared. The weirdest part about it all was that my great grandfather, whom we were supposed to be burying my great grandmother with, didn't have any type of marker. He was just "there" as the funeral director said he was. He regrets to inform us that no marker was ever placed, that in fact, my great grandmother wanted a Valle Verde tree planted there but they never did that and now its Not Allowed. He still has no personality as he's saying this.
We were all kinda leaving the ceremony a little bit weirded out. Suddenly, my grandmother grabbed her ashes and said she wasn't leaving her mom here. We were all like "Yea! I don't think she'd like it here anyways!"
So, Grandma Ruth came with us everywhere we went. We went to Lunch and she was there. We went to Dinner, and she was there. Whats odd is that even though we didn't ask for an extra seat at the table, there always was one, by accident.
The desert can make you feel crazy. I started sleep walking every night I was there. The first night I got out of bed 3 times thinking I was on set. I kept turning on lights and saying "striking". My poor aunt, who I was sharing a room with, was like "why are you turning on the light again?" The next night I got up and stood over and shook her saying "We have to take the ashses!"
Jesus. I haven't slept walked since I was like 12 and that was in Mexico when I ended up in my best friends parents bedroom and sleeping in their bed. That means I walked up a flight of stairs. So very crazy... but come to think of it, that area was kind of a desert too.
The last night we were there we all piled into two cars and drove out to the Sabino Canyon, a state park. We had Grandma Ruth with us and we found a nice old Saguaro cactus and Valle Verde tree for her and sprinkled her ashes there.

I think she would have loved it - she was an eccentric person who truly loved the desert and even though she was religious, I think ultimately this was a far more religious experience than the cemetery and that pastor.