On the day a child was buried, I was there.
On the day a child was buried, as his body was being loaded into the back of his father’s pick-up truck to be taken to the graveyard…
… and as the casket was being carried out of the church, a huge garbage truck rumbled by on the dirt road outside the church.
This is what I noticed… a dumb dump truck full of garbage. It kicked up a cloud of dust, old women covered their faces and children turned to their parents legs as it passed.
And, you know, that Mexican child was loaded into the back of his father’s white Ford F-150 truck – of all the things that man thought he would haul – it probably would not have been his son’s body.
Because, that child was a human, a child of God, somebody’s son, he has as much of right to be on this earth as you or I or any president or senator or captain of industry. He was not loaded into that garbage truck.
At the graveside, there were long prayers and singing and speaking from all the preachers in the area, some coming from up north near Tijuana or Ensenada, to participate in the burial of this young child.
He was 13 years old, named Isaac. He was deaf and mute so he couldn’t hear the car coming that hit him as he rode his bike on the way to play soccer with his friends.
At the graveside, a woman threw herself on top of the coffin, a simple pine box covered with thin white cloth. “No! No! No! I wish it was me so he could still be alive,” she wailed. “I wish I could be with him again.” All of this screaming and wailing and grief disturbed the little girl – probably 3 or 4 years old – who grabbed on to her mother’s legs. “I don’t want it to be you, Mama! I want you to be with me!”
And this is what I saw in passing.
I saw a poor Mexican boy buried in a grave and have a foot of concrete poured over his casket so that the feral dogs don’t dig him up after everybody leaves. I saw the wooden crosses all over that hillside pauper’s grave, most so faded that they would likely be forever unmarked.
But what I also saw was all the dignity that could be mustered from a community who’s entire annual income is likely equal to a single American household, hundreds coming to pay their respects, to a little boy who would certainly have no chance to make an impact anywhere in New York City or Paris or Delhi.
It didn’t matter, because he made an impact on me. And I never met him.
So there it stands, this is what I saw on this morning.
Stay tuned…
-Noah D.
