We didn’t stay long at this cemetery: right after we got there, a group of three or four people pulled up nearby. Normally this wouldn’t have bothered me, but one of the group, an elderly woman, walked over to a set of headstones and was sobbing. It started to seem like we were intruding on something that too private for us to be a part of…it was time to leave.

The woman spoke to me, asking, “Do you have people here?” I told her no, and offered my condolences on her loss and her sorrow. She told me that her family had brought her to the cemetery “for the last time” so she could say goodby to her parents and her son. She was moving from Las Vegas to Tucumcari and would be “too far away” to ever come back.

Tucumcari is 76 miles away.

Trujillo, New Mexico
photographed 11.11.2025