I’m beginning to write out a chapter in my story. Chapter 1 is called Flowers. Chapter 1 is not done, nor is it necessarily the first chapter of the ‘book’, but it’s what came to mind today and it just kept coming.

“The walk down the middle of the crowded church never seemed longer. The fact that hundreds of people were waiting for us didn’t faze me one bit. Some were waiting restlessly inside, whispering, some sobbed quietly, most of them sat in shock at the recent events. Some stood outside, hoping to get a glimpse of the casket, of the sadness, perhaps of our faces.

I had just arrived a few hours ago for my father’s funeral. It was literally happening as the plane landed at Managua’s International Airport in Nicaragua, my home country. As my mother and I walked down the aisle, an aisle where the joy of expectant couples was more fitting than a funeral, we embraced each other, bracing ourselves for what was about to happen.

In a few minutes I would see my father lying asleep, but asleep never to awaken again. My father had died just a few days ago. Today was Monday. He died Sunday morning around 6am of systemic sclerosis at the young age of 57. We approached the box. It was a brown casket, covered with white veils and cloths of some type that seemed fitting for a funeral. There were flowers everywhere.

I wanted to see him so much. I wanted to see it for myself. There he was, yellow from the Hepatitis that finally took his life. Just a few months ago, he and I had walked together to the corner clinic just three blocks away in the middle of urban Managua, hand in hand to get his blood levels checked out. They didn’t look very good and neither did he. Now, there he lay, gone from my eyes. His eyes closed to this world, but open to another, so I knew, yet it didn’t matter to me at the time. My father was gone. My mother sobbed and sobbed. The room moved and groaned and cried with every tear that fell from her eyes. I was stone dry. No tears. I was in shock, in disbelief, yet very aware of my surroundings.

I remember so much about that day, in fact, I remember almost every second of it and of the following days. I wrote a lot, I took lots of mental notes. I cried lots, mostly alone, on the flight back to Los Angeles, with my mom a few times, not often. I cried with my sisters, trying to be their counselor, yet later realizing how much I needed to be counseled. Then began my understanding of mortality, of death and dying, of the end.

But the flowers spoke loudly into my soul. The flowers were amazing. What moved me the most were the flower arrangements in the front of the church, five, perhaps six of them, surrounding my dad, three of four on each side. Later, I realized who they were from: CEPAD, my dad’s job of thirty years, which in the end fired and humiliated him, something my dad never openly shared with me. The Araica’s, who had loved my dad before he became pastor of this very church where he now layed lifeless….”