Dead People

When I was younger, my grandmother used to take pictures of our dead relatives at the funerals. I used to love looking through her many photo albums and it was always a surprise to see me and my cousins posing with Bugs Bunny at Six Flags followed by an up close and personal shot of my great great grandmother in her casket.

Funerals were a regular part of my life growing up. There was always an old aunt or uncle who I never remembered who's wake or funeral we were going to. When I was 8, my mom's youngest sister died. She was 19 and among other things she introduced me to Wet n' Wild nail polish, Caboodles and Prince's Purple Rain. She fell asleep driving home from her boyfriend's on a back country road. Hers was the only funeral my mom didn't let me go to. In fact none of my mom's remaining 4 sisters let their kids go so we sat in my grandmother's garage and had a huge Uno tournament. My cousin Chasity was the only one of us who went and I was completely jealous of her because she got to ride in the family limo. I'd been to plenty of funerals but this was the first close relative who died--the close relative dying was the key to riding in the limo. I was 8 and I knew what death was but I didn't understand it. So to me funeral meant limo so I was ignorantly pissed about the fact that I didn't get to ride in one of them.

I saw a dead person today.

My super died over the weekend. He was a really nice man who always had a smile and a comment about the weather for me whenever I got home from work and he was hanging out smoking by the front door to the building. When my roommate and I had a mouse 3 years ago, he got out of bed to come up and put steel wool in all the openings in our kitchen and bathroom. He was diagnosed with throat cancer about a year ago and hadn't been himself since. The last time I saw him was back in the fall when I came home from the gym to find his wife hysterical because her diabetic sister was having an episode. I called 911 and sat in their apartment til the ambulance came. Ralphie was sitting beside me looking small and sick and sad. And now, not 20 minutes ago I stood in a Hispanic funeral home on 1st Avenue and looked down at his dead body.

I almost cried just because everyone was saying such eloquent sounding things in Spanish and from what I could piece together Ralphie Garcia was a pretty great guy in a lot of other people's opinions as well.