On a last minute whim last week, my gal and I decided to head to Vegas to attend a Dead Forever show at Sphere, our new favorite music venue for all the reasons you’ve heard. We’d never seen the original Grateful Dead nor its latest version minus Jerry and Phil, but were happy to witness the continued Bohemian vibe with Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, and John Mayer.
(It was epic, for what it’s worth, and while I realize I’m too tardy to the tie dyed Bohemian heart of San Francisco, better late than never).
Once again, I sped out to Sin City via California’s notorious blood alley of Pearblossom Highway, and once again, there were a plethora of new descansos erected since the last time I’d taken its route, that only a few months ago in December to see Eagles at Sphere for my girl’s birthday.
It is indeed a bloody road.
We drove out after dark to avoid traffic on a Friday night. That turned out to be superfluous, as near any time of night on a Friday toward Vegas is busy after the witching hour. About ten o’clock or so, I came upon this pair of recently constructed, lighted descansos facing each other directly across the meridian of Highway 18 on opposite shoulders.
On the way back from Vegas two days later, I stopped and shot the pair of shrines again during daylight hours.
They appeared to be recently tendered. Since they were so directly opposed to one another, I came to the conclusion I was looking at the site of a head-on collision. I could be mistaken, as I did not look up recent fatalities on the 18, but head-ons are quite common on Pearblossom. The westbound 18’s shrine had been decorated in Saint Patrick’s day regalia. The eastbound memorial was no less elaborate. Their juxtaposition was touching, lovely, awful, and very powerful.
It’s difficult for me, in my weirdo pseudo-shamanic fashion, not to imagine decedents of a shared incident palavering after the accident, after each entity realized they’d shed the mortal coil. One wonders what must transpire at those sites, what kind of ghostly chat between souls occurs after an accident releases each party from their corporeal shells. Does one blame the other? Does the peace and love of the All-Oneness immediately wash over our chi, or do we linger in our humanity and all its mucky emotions before we head on into the tunnel toward the light? Can souls get pissed off out of body? Existential research, as always, is annoyingly vague. Some ‘ghosts’ still lingering upon the earth do seem irritable. Yet folks who return from near death experiences often report an overwhelming sense of love and unity upon leaving the body. There may be a decision of sorts awaiting us.
Perhaps we can choose to dwell in our connections to the earth before joining the collective awaiting us in the light. Much purported evidence, none of it corroborated by hard science, suggests some souls having yet to leave our plane of existence often seem put out, reportedly unable to reconcile something here on earth before moving on. I imagine an unexpected exit brought on by a drunk or inattentive driver might result in some heated exchanges. In our fictions, ghosts always seem torqued about something. Haunting a house, or a road, or a backwoods swamp, probably tends to make one moody. Whoops. There’s my Scooby-Doo overlap, a condition near impossible to overcome for us Gen X Saturday morning cartoon refugees.
I caught sight of a few more descansos on that westward return trip from Vegas, two newly erected, and two older crosses farther off the road I missed in prior trips over the last two years.
It’s strange, considering what souls might first think or say upon the release of death. It feels morbid, yes, but the truth is, we’re all going to experience some level of that. Perhaps it gets more complex…or perhaps less so?…if others exit this plane in our immediate vicinity at the same time we do. Soldiers on battlefields, Hiroshima victims, multi-car accidents. There must be at least a brief meeting of the minds before everybody departs for their respective spheres, right?
Darned if I know.
One hopes the sudden rush of peace and love might override any animosities incurred from the catalyst incident.
But you know humans. We know how to muckity-muck.
Ask any ghost haunting a house about their refusal to head on into the light.
Cue gratuitous Scooby sound byte right here: Zoinks!
Or if you enjoyed this segment and want to tip without a monthly commitment, you’re welcome to buy us a one time coffee. We remain, as always, your faithful servant of the pen and the meta-sword.