My Neighbor’s Wake

Jorge Milanes

My neighbor died this afternoon.  What a shame!  I want to go to the funeral home for a while.  It’s ten o’clock at night right now, so I suppose I’ll stay there until around three in the morning, since I have to work tomorrow.  On the way, I ran into other neighbors who were engaged in a lively conversation.

“You’re all going to the wake?” I asked them.

“Yeah, and you?”

“Me too,” I responded.

“So that’s it, we’re all going together,” said the group’s leader to me enthusiastically.

As we walked, the laughter and stories are echoed along the way.

“I never thought a wake could be so pleasant,” I commented to them.

“Man…, you don’t know nothing; this is just the beginning,” said one member of the group, who had apparently come with a few drinks already downed.

But what surprised me was that this response had come from a woman, so I began to imagine everything contained in her answer.

We finally arrived to where was laid the person with whom just a few hours earlier had shared everything with us, the good times and bad.  We approached the coffin, took a last look, and then went over to the relatives to express our condolences.

We then left the chapel to sit down outside, near a cafeteria – which, by the way, hardly had anything for sale.

“I gotta have something, even if it’s just a shot.  If not, I can’t spend the whole night here,” said someone in the group.

“Me too,” chimed in another person, pulling a bottle of rum out of their jacket.

“You wanna drink?”offered another man, extending me the bottle.

“No thanks,” I responded categorically.

I didn’t think a funeral home was a place for getting drunk.

“In addition to having to work tomorrow, I think I should show some respect for my friend and his family.”

“Please, don’t drink here,” added the sister of the deceased to them.