ESTA ES SU CASA--JULY 2010
Being still...
This would be the happy newsletter, I said, celebrating Honduras’ appearance in the World Cup for the first time in three decades. Win, lose, or draw--and they did all three, except the first one--it would be some fun. And I will report on that, lest this CASA overtest your patience.
But Dago, Chemo’s 19-year-old cousin, a really lovely kid, was electrocuted last week installing light in his mother Natalia’s house, a project I was paying for. He grabbed a high-tension wire and it killed him instantly. I was not an eye-witness, and the only way my own shock was spared was that I could not understand what folks rushing up to me were saying. I arrived just as they were pulling him into the back seat of the neighbor’s truck to get him to the doctor, and I didn’t get a good look at him till we got there a couple minutes later. Dr. Meme came running out, but as soon as they opened the car door and I saw Dago’s face, frozen in a look of terror, no hint of breath, and smelling burnt, my own heart all but stopped. Dr. Meme, to be kind, fiddled with his stethoscope, here and there, feeling for a pulse, pumping Dago’s chest a little, for about 10 minutes till he sensed we could accept the bad news. Dago’s brothers Marcos and Geovanny, who were cradling Dago, were shaking. I think we all were. I say “accept” but it was way too soon for that.
I just wouldn’t believe it. I kept staring at him, sure that the paralysis was only temporary; in another minute, he would start twitching or something, I was sure. But I was the one who was paralyzed. When we took him back home and folks started clearing out the one-room house for the wake, dressing Dago in nice clothes and laying him on clean sheets in his bed, I was just standing there like an idiot, unconscious, till finally a useful thought struck me: “Chairs!” I rounded up a few kids and we went to my house to bring over my 30 or so plastic chairs. Others hauled benches from an evangelical church even farther away. We needed them all. The longest night of our life. A wood shop is right next door, and we heard the saws buzzing and the hammering all night long, making Dago’s coffin. It had been raining every day for a week, but this night was clear, a big moon bathing all in silvery light.
Already “cooked,” Dago’s face bronzed even as we watched; he was tanning from the inside out. Watching him glow, I thought, Oh my God, is he even more beautiful now? A thought so scary I’m embarrassed to say it--unless perhaps the light was a sign he had already inherited eternal life. His face had assumed the burnished serenity of a Byzantine icon.
Or maybe such thoughts were just cover for my darker thoughts, namely, that I had killed him. I just wanted to upgrade the family, not tear a hole in it. Dago was helping Dennis the young electrician when he died. Dennis disappeared for days; when I finally caught up with him, he was practically a basket case. “I can’t go back there, Miguel.” He felt worse than I did. Meanwhile, Celeo, a more experienced electrician, offered to finish the job.
Helping. That’s who Dago was. When the family asked me to start the celebracion about 9:00 o’clock that night at the wake, I had my theme, even though I was trembling. Dago was a saint. I thought it even before he died. Nineteen years old, but not only did he not indulge any of the “vicios” (vices) common to his peers, such as drinking and smoking and cursing and playing cards and hanging out at the pool hall and jumping girls, but his humility was stunning. He just went to work every day, wherever it was, usually just mixing concrete for some one building a house. I barely knew how to behave around him. I’d visit him at work, taking along other kids to see Dago’s example, on the pretense we were bringing a big Coke to share with the workers on a hot day.
But he had a bad heart. I mean, heart disease. He’d play soccer with the little kids, like Chemo, and when I asked him once, Dago, why don’t you play soccer with the team your own age? he said, “I get tired too quick.” That and his sort of bulging eyes made me think he might have a heart condition like Chemo’s. I thought one day we’d take him to Tegucigalpa, though I didn’t know if we could impose on the brigada yet again. But if my diagnosis is right--and I can only imagine what an autopsy would show!--when he touched that wire, with a heart already weak, he never had a chance.
We buried Dago, and then sat and started praying for nine more days. It is a necessary cycle to smooth some of the jagged edges of the dagger plunged in our heart by Dago’s death.
But it’s even more than that.
The days leading up to Dago’s death had been really awful ones for our little household of Chemo, Rosa, Tonito, and me. Chemo and Rosa had been fighting, I was yelling at Chemo, I was even yelling at Rosa, and Tonito is a 22-pound Gulf Oil Spill. We were at the breaking point.
Then Dago was killed, and his death brought us all together, putting our differences and our indifferences behind us, as we grieve our noble loss. Who could fight or stand on principle when you saw Dago’s mother Natalia, whose ready wit and infectious smile I praised last month, shattered like a stack of dishes? That’s what love can do, to bind our wounds.
In fact, Rosa just told me that Dago had taken a little interest in her. Dago’s first girlfriend! You know, I had wondered why Dago was showing up every evening when we’d go over to Alba’s for supper. He wouldn’t eat or ask for anything. I’d chat and talk with him, like he was visiting ME! That’s how dumb I was. Now, let’s see, technically, Rosa and Dago were “family”--Dago was a younger brother of Alba, who is wife of Santos, who is the half-brother of Rosa (and of Chemo). Impediment? Whatever, Dago’s budding romance is now a legacy I hope we can live up to.
Before all the trouble came down, we had also managed to celebrate some birthdays, Rosa’s 24th, which coincided with little Helen’s 11th, and Mirna’s 12th, which coincided with her daddy Santos’ 36th. If Carolina’s cakes were diplomacy, the whole world would be at peace. In fact, I finally got a good picture of Tonito’s “shining,” a little “Sixth Sense” shock of pure blond hair emerging from a pale birthmark on his forehead. That should be a good sign, right?
In the run-up to the World Cup, Honduras went to Azerbaijan. There aren’t 3 people in Honduras who even know where Azerbaijan is! And I guess I’m one of them. I stared at a map for 15 minutes before I could locate it. The players were lost, too. Honduras did not score a goal in three games. I did better with finding South Africa--at least I wasn’t looking for it next to Argentina like the kids studying my wall map.
If you are watching any of the World Cup, you might know Honduras played three games and out. Which makes us just as good as Italy, the defending World Cup Champion, who also went three and out! And the U.S. played just one more game than we did before packing up. Honduras did not score a goal, true, but our goalie, Noel Valladares, embarrassed the competition by keeping us in every contest with many eye-popping stops. Spain, for example, was a particularly sore winner, asserting that their 2-0 victory should have been at least 8-0.
Here, the whole country came to a standstill for the broadcasts. I thought it was pretty exciting, but my friend Moncho, who coaches our Las Vegas team, was having none of it. He says the coach Reinaldo Rueda composed the team of name-players past their prime who couldn’t keep up with the younger guys they were playing against. “Rueda” is ‘wheel,’ so I made the joke, the team was playing in “sillas de Rueda,” or wheelchairs, a pun that later showed up in one of the newspapers! In fact, Moncho says that our local star Nahum, 19, could have “goaled” us at least into the second round.
Honduras did “earn” one point, from a scoreless tie with Switzerland. Any competition that tolerates a 0-0 final score seems a little unnatural, but not any stranger than those annoying vuvuzelas horns, which host South Africa defends as a “tradition,” you know, like ants at a picnic. So we’ll see how the whole thing ends. Guess it’s pretty much up to the referees, the last bastion of infallibility.
The one champion so far might be the World Cup music theme, K’Nann’s “Wavin’ Flags” that I guess you’ve seen in what’s called the “Coca-Cola mix.” (How could you miss it?) Here we see a Spanish version with K’Naan and David Bisbal. If you could score goals by just tapping your foot, we’d all be champions. I want everyone to be that happy.
June 28 was the first anniversary of the coup that ousted Mel Zelaya. The Resistencia took to the streets, ready with their list of the golpistas’ crimes, including death threats against some of our more activist Jesuit priests. Both sides are setting up Truth Commissions, as if truth could have two sides. It’s a tangled web of injustices, but it would be especially lovely--and here we could follow the standard set by Bishop Desmond Tutu in South Africa’s Truth Commission that shined the light on the evils of apartheid--if the golpistas confessed Micheletti’s crimes and the Resistencia repented Mel’s. Then we WOULD win a World Cup...for Peace.
It can start right here in Las Vegas. We are finishing the novena of prayer at Dago’s house. At least three different neighbors are baking breads for tomorrow’s finale. Celeo hooked up the electricity in a couple hours, without incident, just like that. We are almost back to “normal,” or what the Church calls Ordinary Time--whatever that means.
It should mean, in the words of Fr. Carl Dehne, “being still, standing with reverence, in silence, our hands over our open mouths, in awe at what the Triune God, the Creator of all, is doing for us.” (Trinity Sunday homily, College Church, St. Louis, May 30, 2010)
Love, Miguel
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