When I die, I do hope it is not as quick as a sleeping man swats kills a fly. That is how my aunt Rose died, and my cousin, Larry died, and how my uncle Chris died in the hospital, unattended, all alone in the dark; it all happened suddenly and abrupt, without warning-to all mentioned, all in the matter of a few years, on nice seasonal days. There she was my Auntie Rose, walking in the living room of her granddaughter's apartment where she lived, and choked to death, no one hearing her, almost sleepwalking, and she died, just like that, and that was all that was left of her, one short, and everlasting day. Then she turned cold in death, and pale and stiff, as we all do. We had vaguely spoken to one another after my mother died, three years prior. And like my grandfather, twenty-years before, she laid on the floor, her blue veins protruding. There she was like that-just like that.

After that, after my mother's death, winters and summers came and left seemingly unnoticed for me, perhaps because I was trying hard to adjust to my new conditions. Then came another death, up to this writing, to this very moment, there has been several deaths in the family, one after the other, so compactly side by side, one might think this was a most prosperous season for our family to die in, the last being Ann my aunt and godmother. She was the last to lend a quick alert to our family tree, and add another soul into the once half empty canister.

My brother Mike notifies me almost every time such an event, a death, and its undertaking takes place, within the family, and among our old, and near childhood, neighborhood friends. He and I of course, are still hanging in there. Yet it makes me wonder, and conceivably him some, who will be the fellow to notify me of the next death, if indeed he isn't around to do it, if indeed I go first-and he's not around to do it thereafter-well, you see what I mean.

The feeling of having the other person at hand of something or for something, of managing such affairs-and someone to tell them to, is comfortable, and nice, especially on a cold and rainy outside (night or day, any season will do). Both he and I, feel this, it makes us warm and cozy. I don't know, but most likely, the death of so, so many draws us closer. Both he and I have felt this, possibly Mike more consciously than I because he is the one doing the calling, and telling, going to the wakes, and funerals, receiving the death phone calls from the beloved and grieving-I'm six-thousand miles away (thank goodness).

Oh-key, go ahead, say what you want, what you will, I don't like funerals-period. They are to me like spots of dried paste. And spots of blistering paint, one inside the old house, the other on the exterior; death and funerals are like old worn-out overcoats, never again to see the light of day. The bodies are taut and hard, ugly and dreadful, pale and in areas soft, and no light in their eyes.

Well, to the devil with it all, I'm sure there will be a new disaster to the family sooner than later, ahead, and the prospects are good it could be me! When I die, I do hope though, like my mother, I have time to say goodbye, if not, let me say it now: Goodbye!

8-15-2009/Written at the Mia Mamma Café, Huancayo, Peru, No: 452