Frisco

Frisco is an Oklahoma ghost town. For all I know, the graveyard is the last reminder of a place that once hoped to be what Yukon became - a town along the railroad just West of Oklahoma City. The railroad took a more Southern route than the founders desired, and Frisco went the way of many an early settlement in Oklahoma.

Several of Ly's relatives lie buried in Frisco cemetery. It's a square plot of land out in nowhere, with fields to the horizon all around. A road passes by just South of it, and there are a few trees planted parallel to the road, which can't keep away the noise of the cars traveling past the cemetery every few minutes. We visited with her parents, and our three children. As Ly, her parents, and the girls walked across the graveyard to another tomb, I had to think about the people buried here, and the scene in front of me.

Many of those who found their final resting place here have relatives whose tombs they visited during their lifetime. One life overlaps portions of another life, both have a starting and an ending point, but each is over now. There's an uncle of Ly's who died 11 days after the girls were born. His wife's grave is here, and he surely visited it often. Now, he lies next to her, with his nieces, still to young to understand why you don't climb on tombstones, running about and enjoying their childhood. An even smaller nephew is sleeping in a car, unaware of what's happening.

Looking to the South and to the North, it's like I can see the passing of time in the endless fields, reaching to the horizon with not so much as a real hill in sight. It is as if this graveyard was a symbol of a few lives, many of them interconnected, somewhere in the course of earth's existence. Much time has passed and many life stories were written before those of the people buried here, many more are to come. Some of us are alive right now, full of vitality, joy, curiosity. To the North, power lines go toward the horizon, the increasingly "smaller" poles hinting at the ever farther distance. Blooms that have broken off the plastic and cloth flowers put down for Memorial Day have been taken northward with the wind as if those who have gone away want to send a message to the future, alas, they are kept from leaving the cemetery by a fence. Maybe that is so that we can see them, maybe pick them up? What will we do with them? Throw them in the trash?

Above the entire scene, a blue sky and a few clouds spread majestically. It makes me think of an old Steven Curtis Chapman song I listened to this morning.

"Way beyond the blue, where the Father is calling
Let Him take you to a life beyond compare
His love is wider than the skies above you
And He has plans for you, that go way beyond the blue"