Eulogy for the Piraguero

My father was a Piraguero. With salsa blaring in one ear, he’d push his piragua cart, a contraption made of scrapped wheelchair parts and pieces of plywood, along pedestrian filled avenues, offering cups of shaved ice with flavored syrup.

He was selling his piraguas when it happened: a crack of thunder. The cautious hurried home and huddled under awnings, but my father didn’t heed the warning; he kept shuffling, half-dancing to the music bleeding into his ear. The wispy tips of clouds locked together, forming a grey veil over the city, but he kept pushing that cart, kept dancing ‘til the center of the veil broke open. The sores on his arms must’ve taken in the rain water, ‘cause the doctor said he got too wet, and then too cold. Those sores must’ve taken in the water and pushed him out, like they were used to doing.

My father wanted to be burned up, wanted his ashes thrown like confetti from the top of the Empire State building, to be taken into the lungs of city dwellers like a final infection. But my grandmother refused to have his body boxed up, set on fire and thrown off a building, so we made do; we buried him in a fine suit with the things he loved: a fitted baseball cap, a pack of cigarettes, a cassette player, and a Coors Light. We smuggled spiked coffees into his wake and smiled as we raised the foam-cupped contraband to our lips. “To Robert,” we said, and we drank in the spicy brown and breathed in the stink of formaldehyde through the corners of our sucking mouths. My grandmother, who had been sobbing, watched us listlessly from her chair, suddenly quiet as she dabbed her eyes with a crumpled napkin.

When the priest led a final mass, I saw my father burst in through the massive front doors of that church with headphones on, jigging his hips between oak pews. I heard him telling that old priest to quit rambling, ‘cause the fucking party was just getting started! I watched him and laughed, unmoved by the raised eyebrow of the priest. My father laughed too as he danced onto the raised stage, waving his middle finger at the mourners like a scrolling marquee. The Son of God looked down at us from his hanging cross, and then he started laughing too, his painted mouth gaping like a blood-wetted wound. I held my stomach and laughed out my heart, and laughed out my lungs, and laughed myself inside-out. My tongue flops inside my throat. Laughter fills me up like a vase. My father keeps on dancing.