They'll come to your funeral

Just don't expect to make much splash while here

Solomon at the carne asada cart always tells me, “In this part of Mexico they’ll likely not remember your name but they’ll go to your funeral…”

The week long Funeral Fiesta for the Lady Who Sat in the Hallway at Nacho Floresta’s workshop in a wheelchair and Threw Bottle Caps at the Passing Dogs has come to a close.

As I rounded the corner yesterday I hit the actual In the Ground We Go Procession, where most of the town walks slowly with a lead car strapped with speakers playing loud ranchero music to usher the dearly departed to the cemetery located across the 2 lane highway. Next to the dump where they share a bobcat digger machine.

First, there was the Body at the Welding Shop and dozens to hundreds of people out in the street sitting in chairs and drinking Bud Light tossing cans and eating pork and lofting bones into a pyramid. Dogs have come from all over to say goodbye to the lady who hated them. My neighbor said she was hungover for days from sitting out there drinking for 10 hours.

The hilarity of so many dogs who join in for parades and funeral marches always tickles me and of course the street dogs who follow The Kibble Wagon (my pueblo car) are many and they met up with the parade dogs yesterday who were also many. Mostly fun chases. I pull over because it all seems inappropriate although I have no clue what passes as the Right Thing to Do here. I rerouted and went the extra 6 blocks to the beer store to buy weenies and get cash.

I haven’t left the house for three days having a freaky turbulent unexpected bout of Microbiome Mayhem, but you can’t skip a day of cleaning or feeding with 13 dogs. I don’t care who you might barf on. Get it together. But had I known that the body was being moved again, I would have waited. It was on the community board last week that it was at the church after being at the house of someone else and the welding place and then Don Cubrio Gato Ojo’s place. I thought for sure she was already buried.

As usual, my timing is impeccable and I’m not informed. The guy driving the Loud Lead Car is a miserable pendejo with his wife and they have a CAT RESCUE and our disdain for each other is cartoonish. He saw me pull up to the stop sign and rolled his eyes.

A large old Ford pick up truck covered with a Kentucky Derby’s worth of flowers held the casket and some folks rode in the back. All I could think was, how did he get flowers??? Nacho does pretty well at his welding shop. And although it didn’t appear that La Madre had much luxury while alive sitting next to the washing machine outside near the intersection, by God, she had a FUNERAL.

I worked up the nerve to ask a girl at the tienda one day if the body is just sitting in the person’s home for the whole time like in a chair with all the candles around while the entire pueblo who has never not once been over there to visit that woman drinks beer in the street in front of her son’s welding shop.

Nah, someone comes from Hermosillo and prepares the body so it doesn’t smell.

There’s a place here that is technically a funeral parlor but it’s also where the homeless guys get instant coffee in the morning and where they give rabies shots out from the state once a year. So, like. A room. They call it veladora but in Spanish it’s funeraria. Veladora can be nightstand or candlemaker. Or lamp. Don’t come to this Indian Yaqui pueblo with your King’s Spanish, it’s worthless like asking for el bano in Barcelona.

I waved to her most days. She didn’t respond. I heard her say, Quien es la guera, once (who’s the white lady) it’s always a fairly tepid response here from the elderly. They were more enamored by me in the state of Veracruz. These border states have seen Gringos and they don’t like them. I’m sure they have plenty of reasons. Also no Gringos stay here so they can’t form an opinion either way.

Sometimes I’ll hear someone say, Ella cuide los perros and then a groan. I used to think I’d be respected and revered for this thankless and pocket emptying endeavor that is grossly needed in so many towns. But there’s a reason dogs are abandoned and laying dying in the roads everywhere. They do not give a shit. And I, by proxy, am disregarded.

You know where rescue work is lauded and welcomed? Places that don’t need it like Santa Barbara or Santa Fe, NM. I lived in Santa Fe 20 years ago and the list was so long to volunteer at the posh animal shelters I could never squeeze in. Towns with white ladies seeking purpose, matcha latte and yoga breathing classes have well funded doggy rescues. Places like this have bigger fish to fry. Diabetes. Cartel. Fracking fucking up the fishing commerce.

After 4 years I no longer try to convince anyone I’m necessary, I only try to coerce people to let me borrow their female pup for a few hours to spay when I can get a vet to show up and I pay for it. I do it for the dogs and to attempt to end suffering. They may talk about me when I’m gone, or not. Hopefully I go before it’s in a pine box, but come to think of it who sells pine around here?

In Northern Mexico you are invited to Descanse en Paz (Rest in Peace) just not right away.

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