Merciful Acts of Love
It’s hard to realize in the blur of grief how much love is truly surrounding you, even at Sylvia’s Enchilada Kitchen.
Mom and Ralph were regulars at Sylvia’s Enchilada Kitchen. They were there at least once a week, so it’s no surprise that when I asked Ralph where he wanted to eat lunch today before our appointment at the funeral home, he chose their favorite spot.
Ralph started crying almost as soon as we sat down in the booth. It had been months since Mom felt well enough to eat; they hadn’t been back to Sylvia’s since October. When the man bringing the chips and salsa to the table spotted Ralph, he set the food down and reached out to touch his shoulder.
“Amigo, todo esta bien?”
“No,” Ralph said.
“Que pasó?”
“Mi esposa murió. Ayer.”
“Ah! Lamento mucho.” The man sat down in the booth and draped his arm over Ralph’s shoulder. “Pacencia. Pacencia. Todo estará bien.”
They sat that way for a second, then the man patted Ralph’s arm one more time before getting up and heading back to work. A moment later, a familiar tune started playing on the speakers.
“Listen, Ralph,” I said. “Rocío Dúrcal. ‘Amor Eterno.’ Y’all loved this song.”
He brightened up a little. “Yeah, but your momma liked the Linda Ronstadt version better.”
Mom looked for that vinyl album everywhere we went, in every antique store and flea market, hoping to score an original pressing of Canciones de Mi Padre that didn’t cost $100. She never found one. I wish I’d bought her one while I had the chance, no matter the price.
A few minutes later, their regular server came to the table and immediately bent down to hug him. Word travels fast at Sylvia’s.
“I’m so sorry,” Rosario said. “Your wife, always so happy. She always look for me and say, ‘Rosario!’ Your wife, so sweet. So happy.”
“Thank you, mijita,” Ralph said.
“They loved coming here,” I chimed in. “You always took care of them.”
“You keep coming and I take care of you,” Rosario said. “You promise. I always take care of you.”
When you pour love and kindness into the world around you, it’s waiting there for you when you need it poured back into you. But it’s hard to realize in the blur of grief how much love is truly surrounding you, even at Sylvia’s Enchilada Kitchen. Ralph will see it more clearly in time.
For all the things I’ve learned in the wake of my mother’s cancer diagnosis, hospice and death, I’m still learning new things every day. Today, for instance, I learned that it takes weeks for a body to be cremated — and that someone has to go and identify the body before this can happen. We learned this while sitting in one of the many “appointment rooms” at the funeral home. Ralph does not want this duty, and I don’t blame him.
“I’ll do it,” I said. Part of me relished the idea of seeing her one more time; the other part of me that had already made peace with the final time I saw her face was horrified at the idea she’d be “lightly made up” as the funeral director called it, masking the true nature of her body’s journey in death. Later on that day, my stepbrother and husband both volunteered to do this instead after I told them it needed to be done. Merciful acts of love.
I also learned that being cremated and interred in a “niche” inside a mausoleum involves the cost of something called, euphemistically, an opening and closing fee. On weekdays it’s only $995. Want to be interred on a Saturday? That’s an extra $600. Sunday? Forget it bud, that’s an extra $1200. “Most people don’t choose Sundays,” the funeral director noted. I wonder why.
“Did your mom purchase an engravable urn?” the funeral director asked.
“I have no idea,” I said.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “If she didn’t, we’ll engrave a tag on a chain that will sit on it, like a little necklace.”
Later, when Ralph takes me to see the niche they’ve chosen in the mausoleum, I see what she means. The glass cases that have already filled up around Mom and Ralph’s chosen case contain urns of all shapes and sizes, many of them wearing tiny gold necklaces bearing the names of those inside. Other things decorate the insides of the cases, too. “Death shadowboxes,” my cousin Jennifer called them.
A volleyball and a full set of gently used make-up brushes were in the case of a young woman directly above Mom’s shadowbox. Two incredibly intricate origami swans — one white, one pink — sat side by side in the case of a couple a few rows down. In another, a plastic-encased ticket to a Tina!, Tina Turner’s 50th anniversary concert tour that hit Houston in 2008. A small trophy celebrating one woman’s presidency of her surgical oncology society. A small statuette of La Virgen. A toy truck. Many cases contained a pair of the person’s eyeglasses. I thought of Mom’s recently purchased eyeglasses that she was so excited about. Do you think they’re cute? she’d asked me a few months ago. Should I put those in her shadowbox? How did these people’s loved ones choose such specific few items for theirs?
Mom was also excited about being interred in the mausoleum. It’s something she chose and purchased six years ago, after Meemo had passed away and Mom had to go through the stressful process of handling and paying for Meemo’s funeral arrangements without guidance. That she already took care of all of this — sans the opening and closing fee, which she clearly didn’t know about — has been one of the biggest blessings along this entire journey.
Do you want to see where we’re going to be buried? she asked me one day after the final payment had been made. It’s a Texas history-themed mausoleum. Only my mother. Except not: As it turns out, the funeral director told us, it was almost completely sold out. Many, many other people besides my mother wanted to be interred in the cemetery equivalent of the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin.
We took a field trip that day to see the mausoleum. Mom could make a girls’ day out of anything. She proudly showed me their niche — Look, Sterling McCall is buried right there, she said, pointing to one glass case larger than the others at the end of the room that contained the trinkets of the car dealership magnate in a shadowbox that sat above the mantle of a faux fireplace — and then took me around to show the rest of the place.
She particularly loved the large bronze panels that flanked the entrance to a room meant for memorial services. The panels’ bas-reliefs showed Sam Houston and his famous walking cane, the Alamo, an oil derrick, a NASA logo, various log cabins and tipis, a Longhorn lazing in a field, the Twin Sisters iron cannons at the Battle of San Jacinto and all other manner of Texana, including, curiously, a single boot topped with a cowboy hat. Afterward, we sat by the small lake that the Texas Liberty Mausoleum overlooks and Mom said, Isn’t it pretty? One day you’ll be able to sit here after visiting me.
Not too soon, I hope, I kidded her. What a terrible joke.
Later on at home, I finished up Mom’s obituary. After Christie and Ralph fact-checked it for me, I texted my friend Kyndall, who copy edited my magazine, whom I’ve known since she was just an intern at Houstonia. “Do you mind copy editing my mom’s obituary?” She turned it around beautifully just as she always does — found all the mistakes I always make, always makes everything better. Another one of my magazine crew chimed in on text before I could even ask: “If you need a program design for the service, I’m happy to do that my love,” Alese said. My amazing friend. My amazing art director. “I can even handle printing.” Merciful acts of love.
I lost count of the number of texts and phone calls I’ve gotten today. I’ve tried to respond to every one of them but they’re as numerous as all the little trinkets of love in the death shadowboxes at the Texas Liberty Museum. Jasmine, who owns my favorite gelato shop on Montrose Boulevard, sent me a message to ask if she could make me a special pint of the gelato that Mom and I both loved. Is there a nostalgic flavor I’d like? she asked. “Texas sheet cake,” was my immediate response. Mom and I adored SweetCup’s Texas sheet cake gelato. “It tasted so much like the Texas sheet cake she made and that her mom always made too,” I wrote back to Jasmine Mom made that cake for me any time I asked her to, half the sheet with pecans and half without: Depending on your mood, she said. Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t.
And this, from my old next-door neighbor, Brandi, who was once a chef at a restaurant in the Village that Mom and I both loved: “I remember how in sync the two of you were, eating pizza and pasta at Coppa, grinning ear to ear. I remember thinking, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree when I saw you together.” I’d forgotten that day, lost in the jumble of 44 years’ worth of days and recollections, and Brandi’s message unleashed an entire new memory for me to cherish.
We are surrounded by love. Memories of love. Merciful acts of love.
I greatly admire your ability to capture and share the grief process with your readers. It's lovely to read your words.