City Cemetery & City Dump Part 2

As we made our way through one of the gravesite rows we came to the edge of the cemetery and my eyes tried to grasp another form of death, decay and destruction- The City Dump. The City Dump is a mass of land that only can be described as a canyon. This canyon is an endless pit with one way in and one way out. However, this cruel canyon was home to many of the homeless and destitute. Due to the landslide last year, many of the people living in there were injured, killed and left missing. The city has forbidden living inside the dump and has begun to take necessary precautions to prevent another tragedy. The lingering scent is not as bone chilling as is seeing the thousands of black vultures swooping behind the bulldozers and cover the women, men, and some children who are also walking behind the bulldozer hoping the machine will turn over some food, clothing, or anything worth what they would deem as salvageable or will attack the garbage trucks as they attempt to sweep the trash out of their trucks and trying to avoid hitting one of the people below hoping to find “fresh” food and clothing.

As we looked out over the dump on the edge of the cemetery BJ pointed out a wooden coffin that sat a few yards below us amongst the heaps of trash, uprooted trees and groupings of rocks. What a stark contrast it made against two types of decay. These two places are both storing “trash”. Some trash is more valuable but in which location is up to the individuals in each place. And at which point does a piece of matter become useless trash?

Imagine taking your daughter to the cemetery to see your mother’s grave and as you walk up to the gravesite it stands empty, the plague missing, and the hollow sense of your mother’s body no longer being kept safe is as hollow as the tomb in which you placed her at her death. As short distance away from you your young daughter bends over and starts to play with some trash she picked up. Confused and angry of your mother’s missing remains, you look over to your daughter and find that she is drawing circles in the sand with a piece of trash. You walk over to take it out of her hand and the sun hits the piece of trash in her hand and metal reflects into your eyes. You tenderly take the piece out of your daughters hand and look into the medal plaque you had placed on your mother’s grave the day you buried her. You look around where you both now stand and see shattered concrete bashed and mutilated by a shovel and a small attempt to scrape the remains off the edge of the cemetery into the city dump. Heart aching, you walk over to the edge of the cemetery, daughter in hand, and see the coffin you laid your mother in cast carelessly into the slanting belly of the city dump, bulldozers shoveling the heaps and mounds of trash in the background, the clear sky clouded by the mass amounts of buzzards swooping in to perch close to where your mother’s coffin now lays. “Abuela?” (Grandma?) your child innocently asks as she looks at you… “No, chica” (no little one) you say “solamente otra pieza de basura.” (Just another piece of trash)

My intention for this post is not to disgust you or make you think I am against the tradition of honoring the dead. My hope is that as you become aware and pray for the hearts and souls of the people who daily live out their life thinking they are going to heaven because they honor their dead, worship and pray to dead people. My desire is to give them the hope that death has been conquered and that the treasure they seek is in heaven not in earthly traditions or false regions. Treasure is our salvation and that can never be chiseled out or cast out as trash...

Matthew 6:19-21 Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is there your heart will be also.