Gram and Gramp's Ashes at Mount Signal

From photo batch review, May 2026. Two photos: Mount Signal at golden hour; the trip to scatter the ashes.

The photo DSC_0464 is a desert landscape at golden hour: Mount Signal in the distance, tilted stones in the foreground. The stones are Gram and Gramp's tombstones. The ashes were scattered there — illegally. The desert permits this, regardless of official policy.

Mount Signal — Cerro Centinela in Mexico — was their old picnic spot. They used to come there on horses. The marker is no longer accessible because of the border wall.

There’s a later photo from the actual scattering trip: the crew standing at the site, the rock slabs described as tombstones. Fred knew the spot from family stories.

Gram was Marjorie Meyer Heald. There’s a separate photo from around 2020 — black and white, at the Dana Harbor Inn — of Gram in a cloth bucket hat, warm sharp-eyed smile, turned toward the camera. Fred’s caption: “She was really starting to fade at that point.”