Virginia Vasquez
35°41'46.01"N 118°12'39.97"W
I happened upon an old cemetery last Friday while driving through the Kern River Valley, three hours north of Los Angeles. Since the Kern River is notorious for drownings-it's often referred to as 'Killer Kern', and might as well have been named the Styx-it didn't seem unfitting to spend time among the dead, even if all of them happened to have been claimed by the usual culprits of disease and car accidents and simple old age, rather than by the Kern itself.
The quarter-acre cemetery was established in 1862. Its scattered markers range from splintery crosses lacking names to the elaborate marble gravestone of an old landowning family. There's an obelisk rising from the middle like some stolid mourner, and the familiar white military headstone of a World War I veteran near the east fence, facing resolutely away from the rest of the graves. The sparse grass is dead, and the rest is dirt and weeds, but the place and its situation are beautiful. The quiet and dappled shade had a narcotic effect and I had time to spare, so I lingered for about an hour and even tidied a few of the gravesites.
One site that needed no tidying but demanded attention was that of Virginia Vasquez, pictured above. Virginia died in 1924 at the age of four months, but evidently is far from forgotten. Eighty-eight years after her death, which must have been a tragedy, her simple marker continues to be decorated-perhaps by caring strangers, but most likely by Vasquez family members several generations along, for whom Virginia may well serve as a kind of infant-matriarch. Whatever the case, this unexpected little tableau made my day. No-my week.
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