My husband builds a desert garden for me in California since I can't visit my hometown of Tucson anymore. My body can no longer travel, except in its mind.

I help him as much as I can: We shovel out dirt in the backyard — he with an actual shovel, me with my bare hands, which is how I've always liked to do it. I kneel, the muscles around my loose hips and jelly spine tightening to hold me together. My sciatic, pudendal, and trigeminal nerves tingle with the promise of pain to come. Such small, regular movements for others are huge risks for me.

It's worth it, I think, as the earth soft-squeezes between my fingers, catches under my nails, damp and cool as a compress against my aching joints. It releases its petrichor scent, memories of summer monsoons.

In the long, narrow hole, we spread our old spaniel's ashes. People think cremains are soft, the way burned paper is, but hers are silty mixed with small bones like porous rock. Even with my neck and shoulder braces, the bending and reaching creates a fireball of pain at the base of my neck that will spread out in a constellation by the end of the day. Still, there is something restorative about running my hands over the gritty remains of my bright-eyed, whip-smart, scrappy-as-hell dog.

The shelter had named her Lady. We called her Laddu, an ancient Indian sweet. Eleven when we adopted her, disabled by spondylosis, chronically ill with Cushing's. Deaf from ear infections run amok. Fluent in sign language, which we discovered late one night, when I drunkenly made my point by twirling my finger in the air and Laddu started turning circles.

She loved the yard, breeze flowing through her shiny black fur, carrying scents like souvenirs from faraway lands. Her bone chips are a pastel rainbow, pinks and yellows and blues and green, we think from all the medications she was on. They look sweet like candy, like her. Our Laddu.

Whenever we talked about what she must have been like as a puppy, I envisioned her as the same Laddu we adopted, just smaller. I thought my husband did the same. She'd only had one previous owner for the entirety of those first eleven years, whom we judged harshly. Said owner surrendered Laddu to the shelter because she became incontinent and, due to arthritis, squat-walked as she peed, making an even bigger mess. Easily treated with medication but sure, sickness can be inconvenient.

I've told my husband he can surrender me, too, if mine gets to be too much. He used to chide me when I'd say it. Nowadays, he nods, looks thoughtful, as if imagining our life the way it was before. The way it could still be if I wasn't ill. Dinner parties for our friends, trips north for Christmas with his family, concerts at little hole-in-the-wall bars.

I don't think about if I wasn't ill anymore. It's as much a part of me as my greying hair or debilitating periods.At this point, all I want to do is visit Tucson again. Or at least finish building our little California oasis.

After Laddu's cremains comes a thick layer of gravel and sand that glints gold in the broad afternoon sunlight but is powdery white in the indigo glow of the moon. My husband pours and rakes. I stamp it down, careful not to skid and sublux an ankle. Or knee. Or hip.

Finally, we're ready to plant. It's against the law to take saguaros out of their natural habitat, but we are able grow other beloved Sonoran plants, cholla cactus and a spindly-branched palo verde like skeleton hands reaching up from below.

And in their thin shadows: three red-striped rocks, one glossy conch shell, and two skulls we found half-buried in the canyon. Raccoon or skunk, brown and mucky before sun-bleaching. Each smaller than the palm of my hand but a perfect fit for our miniature garden. A corridor to my childhood where I'd scour the hot, dry, relentless desert for hours, searching for a tiny, mummified lizard with scales sparkling like flecks of mica or a clutch of speckled quail eggs, cracked-open, left behind.


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