This is a wonderful story by Rey Montes, Montes Santa Fe

This is a photograph of Mary/María Trujillo and my puppy Lisa Marie/Lisa. They loved one another. It was unusual for Lisa to love a human since she was in a puppy mill for the first seven years of her life. She had been a champion Toy Poodle, but was imprisoned in a cage while she produced other little champs. But she loved Mary. Mary died September 1st. It was because of Mary that Montez Gallery was able to find a home in Truchas. The last time my father was in a hospital, St. Vincent’s in Santa Fe was short on rooms so he had a roommate, Eliseo Trujillo. During the time we were in the hospital, Eliseo’s wife, Mary, and I became great friends. They say that it is near impossible to form close friends in later life, but Mary and I became very close very fast. As both men were dying, Mary would yell to her husband, “montate!” I had not heard that word since I was a child. “Get back on the horse!” It made me think of my father’s story about the stallion that his father, a horse trainer for the U.S. cavalry in Santa Fe, could not train. One day, while my grandfather was out, my father spent the entire day being bucked off that horse. Finally, in the evening, before my grandfather returned, my father was riding the horse. He had gotten back on. My father told me many stories during his last days in the hospital. He told me where he kept his “treasures”, he asked me to guard them, like his WWII memorabilia which he hid in a trunk in his back shed. He told me many things I had never heard before. And he repeated that Truchas was “Paradise”, his favorite place to fish for trout (“truchas” means trout). My father was an avid fisherman and, after falling in love with my mother from Chimayo (the village below Truchas) he would spend many hours fishing there, often with my mother. A month after my father died, I received an e-mail from Eliseo’s granddaughter that Eliseo had died. I drove up to Truchas to give Mary my condolences and during our meeting she asked me, “?No has visto la capilla?” I answered, “?Que Capilla?” Mary said that when she was a girl she went to a church that was just a few minutes walk from her home and I should see it. At the time, I was wondering how I could save my 22-year-old gallery in downtown Santa Fe (which has the same square footage costs as Manhatten) during the recession. As I opened the beautiful blue doors of the old, adobe church, my heart flew out of my heart! It was the perfect place to place the santos made by the more than 100 families of Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado that I represent. And the rent? 1/6th of the cost! Mary helped me hang every retablo and display every bulto in the capilla. We started in one corner and went around the old church as everything fit in place naturally. At the end, I told Mary, “Eliseo and my father are with us.” Now, Mary is watching over her family, Lisa and me. Mary taught me many old traditions and many archaic words in this village of Truchas, the highest and most protected in New Mexico. And so, to my great friend, Lisa and I miss you dearly. “Has montado, Maria. Cuidanos.”

--Montes Santa Fe