As a young boy I was extremely arrogant, I never really understood the concept of death. It was always this great mystery. What happens? How it feels? Are you ever truly prepared for death? So when the day came that I had my first encounter with death I didn’t really know how to react. I always loved to have an answer for everything so it was a rude awakening to what life entails and the mystery’s it holds.
My grandfather Pollo Ramirez was the man to introduce me to death. It was a strange feeling when my parents told me he had died. I cried, I mourned, and through it all had never truly realized that he had even died. This is a man that I considered a second father, he picked me up from school every day, put a roof on my head when I didn’t have one of my own and fed me so that I never went hungry.
This man brought me up, he taught me a lot of things that are still very relevant to me now. So as a boy looking around the wake and seeing my entire family in tears seemed odd. My father is a strong character as is my mother. Imagine my surprise as they seek comfort themselves due to what had happened. At the funeral home things only worsened as you can imagine, my parents crushed, my grandmother widowed and myself too young to truly comprehend what is happening before my very eyes.
We walk up those dreaded steps, those everyone fears as they can see their loved ones simply boxed up as if they were any other object. Although still fearful, I went up those steps still unprepared for what lies ahead and with each step my feet grow weaker and heavier for I fear what lay ahead. Not necessarily because it is scary as used in the traditional sense but because of the realization that this is not only a loved one but also a fate nobody escapes. So I look down then at my surroundings finally realizing that everyone around me including myself will one day find themselves neatly arranged in that dreaded box up those long and heavy steps.
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