Life and Death in Albuquerque
Strangers in a strange land
The last time Rafael and I were in Albuquerque together, we’d driven there in our new electric car. This time, we flew. The last time we were there, we visited his mother. This time, we attended her funeral.
Flora was 96, and Rafael had seen her a couple times recently — including the night before she died. She’d lived a long life — at times good, at times tough — and had said she was ready to go.
At that point, it’s not a tragedy when someone dies. But it’s still sad. It’s still heavy. And it’s still a significant moment in life.
It’s also hard to take in. We didn’t see Flora often or talk to her every day. So, is she really gone? The wake was open casket, but Flora’s body didn’t look like her. They apparently do some plumping up of the face that distorts the features a bit — and even if that hadn’t been the case, how much does a body ever look like a living person? I haven’t seen enough of them to know.
New Mexico can seem like a foreign country inside the U.S. Growing up in Illinois, I was more or less unaware of it. It wasn’t till I visited in my early 30s that I learned it contained ancient petroglyphs, something I hadn’t known existed in this country. I was ignorant. I didn’t know New Mexico was one of the poorest U.S. states. I didn’t know so many Native people lived here. I really didn’t know anything about it.
Now I know it only slightly better. I’m drawn to visit, and I enjoy it. The state has grown more familiar to me. Yet it still feels foreign.
The beauty in New Mexico hits you in a way you can’t deny. There’s something alluring about the place. Yet it’s hard for me to get past the oppressive summer heat, the dryness that sucks all the moisture out of my eyes, leaving them perpetually red, and the altitude that knocks the wind out of me. If I’m not making sense in this post, I’ll blame all of those factors.
Having grown up in the lush and humid Midwest, I have a fondness for greenery that the desert can never satisfy. I appreciate the beauty there, but it never feels like home.
The rituals of this visit were also foreign to me. Not being religious and not having been raised with a religion, I find organized religions inscrutable — all the more so the more rules and rituals they contain. The trappings and traditions of Catholicism remain a mystery that I’ve never had the inclination to solve.
On the first day of the proceedings I sat through the rosary, with its monotonous repetition, wondering how the very stern-looking women conducting it would know when to stop. Plenty of those in the audience chimed in at the appropriate times with specific religious words that were — and always will be — a foreign language to me. I recalled a previous rosary that had seemed to go on forever. This one was blessedly reasonable in length.
The next day I sat in the back of Holy Ghost Catholic Church for the funeral mass, still feeling like a visitor to a foreign land who has no clue about the customs and doesn’t know the language. My first experience of a religious funeral, all about God and not even remotely about the person we were mourning, had left me disappointed. Father Hyginus, in contrast, deftly interspersed tales of Flora with tales of the Lord in his booming voice with a thick Nigerian accent. I wondered what took him to Albuquerque, where he was foreign yet seemed to fit in. Four years ago, I’d been impressed by his funeral service for Danny, Rafael’s youngest brother, who had Down Syndrome. I give Father Hyginus credit for having the grace and sense to get personal.
Still, the religious ceremony didn’t evoke much emotion in me. I felt out of place surrounded by people for whom all of this meant something. It was important to be there, and we appreciated those who joined us. And we were a bit like tourists who had stumbled upon a local culture we didn’t understand.
Rafael was raised Catholic but is even less religious than I am. The Catholic invocations didn’t do it for him any more than they did it for me. But the ceremony meant something because we all need rituals to mark the major life transition of death. It meant something because people showed up. It meant something because he had another chance to reconnect with relatives, including some lovely second cousins he’d met for the first time ever at Danny’s funeral, and a bonus one he met for the first time at this funeral.
Eventually, it will sink in that Flora is really gone. The next time we go to Albuquerque, there will be no Flora to visit. No arrangements to make. No funeral to attend. We’ll have new relatives to visit and connect with. We’ll have time to see friends who live there. Life will go on.
Four years ago around this time, Rafael and Flora were at French Funerals & Cremations arranging Danny’s funeral, when Flora had a pensive moment. Pondering Danny’s death on this somber occasion, she made the solemn pronouncement: “When my sister Mary and I are gone, that’s the end of the line.” Rafael and the funeral director looked at each other. They tried to compute what she’d just said. There was a moment of silence, and then Rafael couldn’t contain himself any longer and burst into laughter. Catching his breath between laughs, he noted to his confused mother, “Mom. I’m sitting right here.” At that point, even the funeral director couldn’t hold out any longer. Finally Flora got it, and she too joined in the merriment.
Flora may not have been 100% accurate, but she had a point. None of her children had children, so this part of the line was indeed coming to an end. But there are plenty of cousins with kids. Life goes on.
For now, we’re still here. We still have plenty of life left in us.
I’m used to feeling foreign and out of place, having felt that way for as long as I can remember. I always thought it was because I was an immigrant with a name that those around me couldn’t pronounce, but as I got older I realized it’s part of who I am. One reason I live in the San Francisco Bay Area is that it’s full of misfits and rebels; I don’t feel as out of place here.
Maybe some of us will always feel foreign. Visiting the magical state of New Mexico and attending Catholic ceremonies just accentuates and reminds me of that feeling. But it’s always there, wherever I find myself — ready to emerge at the slightest suggestion that I’m somehow different from everyone else.
Being social animals, that’s not the most pleasant feeling for us humans to have. But it can confer the gift of observation: when you feel like you’re looking from the outside, you look at things in a different way. You see things that those on the inside don’t see. I hope there’s some value in that.
Foreign as I might have felt, and foreign as the place and the rituals felt to me, we got a lot out of our short visit to this special state. I’m glad to be back at sea level, and I look forward to our next New Mexico journey.
As usual, another exceptionally great piece. Well written, sensible in every meaning of the word, and making me feel even more proud of my daughter and how well she writes and her thoughts. Gracias, querida Rosana, Flower Child. Sos la flor de mi vida!!!!
I sometimes feel like an stranger in my own land, such as it is and such as I am. I tend to feel the most comfortable in the company of artists, scientists, agnostics, and those who generally wander (and wonder), yet are not entirely lost. And that's largely what was hard for me to find in my hometown. I moved in the late 80s to San Francisco and discovered it was still a haven for the exile. But even that "island in a country" is now only a memory.