My White Stepdad's Mexican Funeral and Searching for Answers from Wall J
Having to die is, without a doubt, the biggest bummer there is in life.
The second one, you might think, is watching the ones you love die.
But no.
It’s telling your kids that those whom they love and who love them will die.
And that is the second biggest bummer in life.
I can feel it when we have conversations with our daughters that Papaya, our almost-sixteen-year-old Chihuahua, might not be here much longer.
Papaya is aging rapidly. She has lost her sight. She has lost her hearing. And she has lost her ability to understand that there are some spots in the house where she shouldn't get into because she will be trapped and will have to cry loudly for us to get her out.
My stepdad passed at the beginning of this year after a seven-year jig with cancer. (As long as we are on the topic).
It was hard to see him die, and there was a part of me that didn't want him to go not because I wanted him to overstay his welcome but because I didn't want to tell my girls he had died.
The thought of breaking the existential seal to my 6-year-old and 4-year-old that we all die was tough. But the thought of taking them to a funeral with my mom was bone-chilling.
I knew it was coming and that it was just a matter of time, so I had to prepare my girls: “My mom, your Tata, has big feelings. And she likes to display them. And you better believe that's what's going to happen at Grampa Rodger's celebration of life.”
The day I dreaded came: we had to go to the funeral.
I seriously considered not taking the girls.
Why scar a child twice? Once when someone they loved passed and a second time when they watched my mom grieve as if she was part of a telenovela.
My stepdad, who was born in the Appalachian Mountains in West Virginia, who voted three times for Trump, who watched Fox News from dawn to dusk, had a funeral service at a Mexican funeral home.
It wasn't because the very brown lady (my mom) who took care of him on his last days is Mexican.
No. She is Colombian.
It was because that same brown lady found the best celebration-of-life deal in Denton County.
The funeral home proudly flew the Mexican flag at the entrance, and was in a strip mall in North Dallas with a Mexican meat butcher shop on one side and the freeway on the other.
It was a reminder that life is full of cosmic irony, even after we die.
It's not that I want to protect my daughters from seeing what life actually looks like, and life actually looks like we all have to die.
It is that I want to protect my daughters from seeing my mom's dramatic reaction to what life actually looks like.
My mom, who I always thought missed her calling as a dramatist, can act out emotions by crying extremely loudly and looking at the sky and asking God, "Why me?"
It is not that these are not normal reactions to losing your partner; it is that my mom does it so over the top that it makes you feel like you are in a telenovela studio.
I took my daughters to Rodger's celebration against my better judgment.
As expected, my mom took the pulpit and cried very loudly.
A ceramic, flying Jesus was hanging from the wall next to the pulpit, and my mom turned to him and asked, "How am I supposed to do this?"
And wall Jesus' face looked nonplussed as if saying, "Hey, don't look at me. I'm just hanging here."
My daughters processed my stepdad's death differently.
The moment Jovie, my oldest, found out that my stepdad had died, she ran to our family paper calendar hanging in the living room.
She found the box that belonged to his birthday in September. Then she drew a stick figure on it; she gave it a shirt and pants, put xs on the eyes, tongue out, and then a party hat over his head.
Amélie, my youngest, who was present for my mom's performance of a lifetime, broke out crying in a way that she never did before or since.
I looked up at wall Jesus and thought, "You see what I have to deal with?"
And he just hung there as if saying, "Tell me about it. That. Was. A. Lot!"
It has been a year of goodbyes and midlife squeezes.
But like it happens every time you lose someone, life goes back to normal.
You slowly find again the rhythm of time, but eventually something hits you that reminds you of the person you loved (or the unfortunate funeral circumstances they were buried under).
This year we also had to say goodbye to our very good friend Takos Locos.
Takos Locos was our twenty-year-old light gray Toyota Camry.
We give our cars names based on their license plates.
Takos' license plate letters were T-L-K, so I decided that it meant Takos Locos. And the girls shortened that to Takos. So for the last two years of its life, our 2006 Toyota Camry was warmly referred to as Takos.
Takos contracted an incurable disease called "Leaky gasket." At least, incurable by someone with poor handy skills like me.
I don't have many emotions around cars. I appreciate that they drive me to the places I need to go. But my wife and my daughters were very sad about having to let go of Takos.
I told the girls they can be sad and grateful. Grateful that it was in our lives when we needed it, happy that it went to a family with a dad who knows what a wrench is, and sad that it is no longer with us.
You can hold all those emotions at once.
"Like Grampa Rodger," responded Amelie.
"Yes, honey, like Grampa Rodger."
It felt a little cheap using the same grief-coping strategy I used for the death of my stepdad to deal with the sale of our car.
Then she said, "We should have a celebration of life."
That night, after dinner, we turned on our propane fire pit, sat down in a circle, and went around saying something nice about Takos.
It was nice.
And a bummer.
All at the same time.
Which, every now and then, life is.
