This archive report was first published on 17 August 2019.
On August 3, 2019, a mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, left 22 people dead, including Margie Reckard, the wife of Antonio Basco. Two weeks later, Basco's daily routine was still centered around his wife's memory, as he visited a makeshift memorial with 22 white wooden crosses, one for each victim.
Basco's solemn ritual, born of grief and unmooring, was tending to Margie's garden. Every morning, he would buy as many floral bouquets as he could fit in his sport utility vehicle and take them to the memorial. He would carefully clip the stem of each flower and place them one by one on his wife's display, pouring water and sprinkling floral food to keep them alive as long as he could.
'She loved any kind of flowers. I could walk down the street and find flowers that had been run over a thousand times and she would think it looked like a million dollars,' Basco said on Friday morning, in little more than a whisper. 'I keep doing this because I want to keep her memory alive.'
As the memorial drew mourners who left flowers, candles, and stuffed animals, or read the notes and cards to each victim, Basco's daily visits became a source of comfort for him. He would sometimes return to the memorial at night and sleep next to the cross, hardly visible among the piles of flowers and mementos. Other times, he would lean in and talk to Margie.
When he was done, strangers would line up to give Basco a tearful hug, sometimes take a photo, and express their condolences. Some may know him as the man who invited everybody to his wife's visitation and prayer service, worried that he would have to bury his partner of 22 years alone.
Published on August 17, 2019, at 3:18 a.m. CDT.
