The Pioneers’ Home Cemetery sits high on a hill in Prescott. It was once the site of a retirement home for the early settlers, gunfighters, saloon piano players, and miners who came to Arizona in the 1800s during its blood-and-thunder days and built the state. Many of those pioneers are buried in plots that dot the hilltop overlooking the city. In a separate section, gathered into a memorial made of granite and bronze, are the graves of my brothers, the Yarnell nineteen.
I go there when I can. Not too often, to be honest. It’s painful, still, more than I can describe. What happens when I first walk up to the bronze memorial plaques laid out in a rectangle is that I remember the rain we had the day we dedicated the memorial. And then I see the faces of the families from the funerals. I went to each funeral, and I remember each one vividly.
I just walk around the memorial and let the memories come. I couldn’t stop them if I tried. I can’t stop the pain I feel. I just let it happen. Aunts, mothers, fathers, daughters: I see all their faces and it’s like I can hear them crying all over again.
But I love this place, in a way. I’ve told my family I want to be buried here. That was an easy call. Many of the loved ones of the guys have said the same thing: They want to lie next to their son when the time comes. I want to be with my brothers. That’s where home has been for me ever since I met them. I want my grandkids to come visit and see my name and then read about the other guys and hear stories about what kind of men they were. There are stone benches for them to sit on. That gives me comfort, imagining my grandson sitting there and my daughter telling him what his grandpa did and how the other men gave their lives for their work and each other. There’s no point in remembering me without remembering Eric and Jesse and Chris and Travis and the rest of the boys, because without them I would have been a different man, a far less honorable person.
Is it strange, at twenty-three years old, to think about my burial plot? Not for me. It’s the continuation of what I feel now. I think about the guys every day; I talk to them. There’s not a day goes by that I don’t encounter a situation where a lesson one of the Granite Mountain guys taught me comes to mind. It could be how to treat every moment with Michaela like it could be my last. It could be about trying to be honest and fair with everyone I meet. Or giving people a chance, like Eric did for me.
Do I always live up to their memories? Hell no. I mess up all the time. But I never even had that ideal to try to reach before. Now I do. Those guys are with me as much as my daughter or my mother is, and so I look forward to being alongside them for good.
Therapy has gotten me here, talking through that day at Yarnell and untangling the emotions that come with it. I’ll never lose the horrible memories I have, but I can change the way I feel about them. The counseling I’ve had isn’t like surgery; it doesn’t remove the pain the way a surgeon removes a cancerous tumor. I’ve accepted that I’ll always have flashbacks to June 30, 2013. The memorials, the faces, the crinkly feel of those orange body bags, they’re part of me.
But I’ve been allowed to grieve these men now. I’ve accepted that I couldn’t have saved them, no matter what I did. For so long, I felt that Eric and the others gave me so much that I owed them something in their final moments, that I needed to save them the way they saved me, and I didn’t do that. And that’s what hurt me the most.
But that’s not what happened. What happened was a wildfire that ran out of control. I didn’t fail my brothers, and they didn’t abandon me.
The people who chose the location for the Pioneers’ Home Cemetery knew what they were doing. It’s a peaceful place. The wind blows across the hilltop and all you can hear is the leaves fluttering in the trees and the flags snapping on their poles. It’s just the blue sky and the granite and the faces etched into the bronze. You’re alone up there, but you’re not alone.
Before I leave, I give one last look to the bronze plates, see what the families or strangers have left. Stuffed toys. Little bottles of whiskey or bourbon, in memory of a night with one of the guys years ago, most likely. Sometimes veterans leave the medals they earned overseas. Firefighters from all over the country leave their patches in remembrance. It would surprise you how many Americans still have the guys close to their hearts.
When I’m up there, I do feel that my brothers are at peace. There are even times I envy them that. I’m not at peace yet. But it will come one day, that I know.
After an hour or so at Pioneers’ Home, I get in my pickup truck and drive. I let the memories fade away for the moment and I head home and pick up Michaela, tell her about my day. Only by learning to live with what happened at Yarnell, and accepting the gift that my brothers gave me, can I be with the people I love.
I understand that now. It was a hard lesson to learn.