“Rosario”
Today we buried a  beautiful woman. There were no flowers, no hearses, no instruments for music. No eloquent eulogies or photo slide shows. There was a cheap fur covered coffin, carried by men in rubber boots. There were people following in the rain and mud. There was our family van carrying her beautiful body, filling the inside with a hard to bear odor, driving down to the cemetery – with grass and weeds tall as our knees. There were people gathered, scattered wherever a patch of less soggy ground could be found – some unknowingly on top of graves marked by two sticks fastened into a cross, slanting and falling over. There were children snapping their flip flops in sticky mud while handing to the crying family the colorful weeds they’d picked along the way. There were men lowering the coffin with yellow rope into the deep hole… there was slipping of the rope and falling of the coffin, toppling and slanting … causing our beautiful friend to fall out into the mud. There were scuffles and scrambling for a ladder but none to be found. There was the daughter weeping and running away to the other side of the cemetery not able to watch any longer. There were men jumping way down into the deep hole to help her themselves. There were two shovels…only two shovels. Borrowed from a friend. Two scoops of dirt at a time falling down onto the fur, one after the other as men took turn after turn, pausing to wipe away sweat, 45 minutes until the hole was filled. There was mourning and weeping and tears. And there was dancing and rejoicing in Heaven where there is no more poverty and not one minute of suffering or loneliness or darkness. Only beauty. Only goodness. Only gazing upon the one who is Love. And who makes all things new.
– Lacy