Life, Contemplation & Food For Thought

A Grave Visit

A small pause between generations.

My father looking at his father’s grave after some 30 years of not visiting. Photograph by Ivan Melicoff Abril. You can see and read other Erosion Stories HERE.

My grandfather’s grave was vandalized many years ago. He was a notable character in the Mexican mining town of Cananea, Sonora. He was known for providing groceries to all the miners on a months-long strike in demand of fair wages in the early 1940s; there’s even a street named after him. Robbers took the marble that covered his grave and managed to tear off the bronze Christ from the cross over him, leaving only hands and feet. Curiously enough – and we think unrelated- the street signs in his name have also gone missing.

Hands and feet was all the robbers left after tearing a bronze Christ off the cross at my grandfather’s grave. Photograph by Ivan Melicoff Abril.

My father is the oldest of ten siblings and this is the first time in close to thirty years that he’s been here. Before he was born, his older brother passed away as a child around one year old in 1939. It was a tremendous blow to my grandfather who had separated from a woman who couldn’t bear children before marrying my grandmother. We looked for his brother’s grave but in the abandoned state the cemetery is in, we could not find it.

I let a couple of months pass before I showed him these photographs and asked what he thought of them. He said he was perplexed by how bad the situation had gotten in town, so much that some people had to resort to stealing from graveyards. He was sad of how abandoned the whole cemetery was, how graves were there left never to be tended. It was a disheartening sight.

A short two day trip to a dusty town presented me with the disappearing act of life under the erosion of the sandpapers of time. It made me realize what a small step in time a generation is.

We were looking at the photos conversing and I casually mentioned, “you know, this was the closest thing to the three of us being together in one place…” He paused and replied “yeah… well, will you look at that”.

My father reflecting on the general state of abandonment at Cananea’s cemetery. Photograph by Ivan Melicoff Abril.

From my family series “Erosion”, reflecting on how places, people, family and memories change only to fade away before our eyes. Cananea, Sonora. Mexico.

You can see and read other Erosion Stories HERE.

(1) My father looking at my grandfather’s grave.
(2) Hands and feet of the bronze Christ that was stolen from cross over my grandfather’s grave.
(3) My father reflecting on the visit to the cemetery after almost 30 years.