This photo is for Pheby, wife of Jabez Buckley. She dies in 1848, is buried next to her daughter and her husband in a small plot surrounded by a rusty mesh fence on a lonely country road. I have driven by Pheby’s grave so many times in my life her, but recently, I have begun to stop and pay her a visit. I speak to her, and tell of her my life, toss a flower over every now and then, take a photo so she will know that she and her life with Jabez are not forgotten, in a country that sheds it old ways , shakes them off like a dog shakes fleas. And what is respect anyway? Is it money in the bank? Health insurance?

What would Pheby make of us, I wonder? Of what we value, of what we want, of a world where spirituality is a late night skit, a joke, something to jeer at and rush past. Oh, those people again. I get sad when I visit Pheby, I don’t know why, sometimes I cry. But not for her. For me.