Funerals are Fun By Amelia Cuevas Artwork by Chloe Yanny Tilar
I stared at him, looking at his face to know what I should be feeling. Paulin’s cheekbones held his saggy skin high. The whites of his eyes posed the impression that they were never white but a pure pinkish red. His nose bore an uncanny resemblance to bell-bottom pants (thin at the top, enormous holes at the bottom). A bone would stick out a little after the nose bridge, and at the end, the tip was forever pointing at the ground. Under his nose was an incision, or his lack of lips, and his forehead housed a family of wrinkles. I pinch skin on his hand hoping to get his attention, but the longer I pinch and pull, the more it becomes clear that I’m making matters worse. He used to have this grand smile that showcased his rotten, yellow teeth; it would appear on days he’d bring his wife on visits just to bring my family some cookies. He and Felicita stood together always, but today he put away his bright smile ‘til later days, and his wife would never stand by him again.
I was half his height and completely unaware of where I was. Nervous pen clicking, forced laughter, and whispered conversations filled the room. After a man in a white alb spoke, many people crowded around an elevated floor that held a beautiful box, a big box. They looked like bees, waiting for their mute queen to speak.This box was plated gold with figures of angels and carved vines traced along the wooden border. Golden bars stuck out which were later used as handles to take the big, beautiful box to a scary, spacious, black car, which I later found out was called a “hearse”. My dad had told me to never look into the box. The way his voice shook and his eyes puffed made me believe that if I did, my eyes
would puff too, my voice would be taken away forever, and because I was smaller, that box’s power might be stronger on mine. My hair might fall out or I might get my own family of forehead wrinkles. When I learned that people die, it wasn’t a verbal discussion. I was told we were going to a funeral, a procession, and a wake. Days before, I learned in school that “Pro = Good” while “Con = Bad”, so I wondered why my dad’s mustache drooped a little more that day when he said “procession”. He didn’t explain what a funeral was either, so as a kid, I made an assumption, many assumptions, about funerals. After looking at how the word was spelled on the orange sticker on my dad’s windshield, I thought that where we were going couldn’t be that bad since “FUN” was right before the “-ERAL”.
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