…herself.”
The cemetery manager, Mr. Ortiz, showed me the request. My family’s burial plot is in the oldest section of the cemetery, under an oak tree. There are four spaces. My grandparents. My mother. And one left for me.
My daughter-in-law, Kimberly, had submitted a transfer form claiming that I’d “gifted” the plot to her. She’d attached a letter with my signature. She also asked whether the remaining space “could be sold separately.”
Historic plots in that section sell for more than forty thousand dollars.
“We would never process a transfer without the owner in person,” Mr. Ortiz said. “And the owner is you. But I wanted you to know someone tried.”
I told him the signature wasn’t mine. He filed a report with the police that same day.
Then I posted a reply under Kimberly’s Halloween photo. Just one sentence: “This is my mother’s grave. She raised me alone, worked two jobs and never once complained. Please take this down.” Within an hour, Kimberly’s own friends were asking her what she’d been thinking. She deleted the photo that night.
My son, Ryan, called me the next morning. He hadn’t seen the photo before it was posted. He hadn’t known about the plot transfer. He’d known Kimberly wanted my mother’s savings, and he’d told himself it was “family money.”
“It was my mother’s money,” I said. “She saved it one dollar at a time.”
Kimberly was charged with attempted fraud. Ryan came to the cemetery with me the following Sunday. We cleaned the headstone together. He planted marigolds, my mother’s favorite. He didn’t say much. He didn’t need to.
