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Death and the journey home

Change is the only constant
and death the only certainty

Ruben Hernandez

One late October night in 1998, while residing in Naples, Florida, I got the long-distance telephone call most of us dread.

“Mom has passed away,” my brother Tom said.

My first reaction was numbness. I hadn’t realized my mother Stella was that sick.

When we had talked on the phone two weeks before, she mentioned that occasionally she was having some trouble breathing. I had a twinge of concern, but soon forgot it as the subject changed.

When I hung up, the reality of my mother’s death still hadn’t hit me. I was confused.

Then I was certain of only one thing. I had to go home to be with Mom -- for the last time.

Naples is about 2,300 miles from Phoenix. As I drove through the night memories of Mom was my passenger.

I pulled into Phoenix on the interstate as the light before dawn brushed the eastern sky. The South and Camelback Mountains emerged from bluish haze. The aroma of creosote breezed in my open window. This desert city re-introduced itself to me in amber hues.

There were more and taller buildings than I remembered. Change is the only constant, I thought. And death the only certainty.

I didn’t cry at Mom’s funeral. Not even when I read her eulogy. The one I had composed.

“We left that to you. You’re the writer of the family,” my dad said.

I summed up my mother’s life as eloquently and lyrically as I as capable of -- in two  hand-written pages.

There was the family gathering after, the abundant food, the re-unions with relatives who lived far away, the Mexican and American music, hugging Valley old friends.

Latino family funeral parties are not for grieving. Don’t even try. That can only be done alone, in private. With the Creator.

The next day I got ready for my return journey to Florida, and my job as a newspaper editor there. It would take another funeral to get me back to Phoenix.

Before I hit the road, I decided to drop in on my friend Zarco Guerrero and his wife Carmen. They were coordinating the Día de Los Muertos festival at the Heard Museum, and had invited me. This couple had initiated the first Día de Los Muertos celebrations in Mesa Pioneer Park a quarter-century ago.

What I didn’t know was that the young, husky high school student they had recruited to be Doña Sebastiana had backed out.

Doña Sebastiana is also known in the Mexican culture by the names La Santisima Muerte, or Saint Death. Zarco had manufactured a 16-foot puppet that walked the grounds at annual festivals, playfully joking with festivalgoers, and gently scaring small children.

Because my buddy was in a jam, I volunteered to become Doña Sebastiana for a day.

Wearing the puppet sculpture for hours made my body hurt, but seemed to have a healing effect on my sadness.

At the end of the day, I came to another realization. I would never experience this celebration of death – and life – in Florida.

Día de Los Muertos is a distinctly Mexican and Mexican American communal ceremony. Its public and private rituals were rooted in Mexico and the Southwestern U.S.

It was then that I knew that although I would return to Florida and the sea, but I would soon leave it to journey home to Phoenix one final time.

My spirit is tied to this desert where my mother was born. Where as young man I aspired to be a writer. Where I was taught community traditions like Día de Los Muertos by my Chicano artist amigos. Where I learned to honor my culture and its healing traditions.

Because of death I journeyed home. Because of death I will die here.