Fort Benton, Montana

High on a windswept bluff in Big Sky Country, overlooking the Missouri River, my people are buried, including my dad’s parents, Logan and May Hazen, and May’s parents, Gustav and Augusta Bruesch. And now my cousin, Duane Allen Hazen.

Three years ago, we visited Riverside Cemetery, with my dad, who grew up near Fort Benton, then lived in New Jersey 63 years. When my dad died later that year, and his only surviving sibling, Uncle Herb, moved to Helena, I didn’t expect to return. Then Duane died unexpectedly. Jim and I were already planning to fly to Salt Lake City, so I bought a ticket for the Salt Lake Express to Great Falls. When I set my alarm wrong and woke up just as the van was leaving Salt Lake, Jim drove 80 miles to Tremonton, Utah, to catch it. The 15-passenger van arrived and I climbed into the only empty seat, which was sopping wet and directly under a leaky roof vent. Water dripped on me at every curve in the highway until the rain stopped and the vent emptied, but I was grateful to have a seat at all.

The memorial and graveside service were Saturday morning. Later that afternoon, I returned to the family plots and made a map. Wilbert Freddy Bruesch’s marker, flush with the ground, was covered with dirt, so on Sunday I borrowed a large stockpot and scrub brush from the church kitchen and returned once again. The red granite stone was hard to read: the raised letters are worn. They tell a sad story; my grandmother's younger brother, Wilbert, was five and a half when he died in March of 1913. Her son, Donald, died at age two in 1927. The club no one ever wants to join: my grandmother and great-grandmother lost sons too young.