Loss

In thinking of Celia Cruz, I share something I wrote when I watched the funeral mass in St. Patrick's Cathedral.


The familiar marble columns of St Patick’s frame a coffin, draped with a large red, white and blue flag. It is not an American Flag. Today, New York mourns Celia Cruz. I am surprised by the tears welling in my eyes. Although I had always appreciated her as an icon and loved her indomitable spirit, I had never been particularly fond of her music. My music was Clapton and Led Zepplin and, I confess, Gordon Lightfoot and Tom Rush. I was too American for Celia. It’s that flag, that last gesture of defiance against the regime that banned her music, made it impossible for her to ever return to her homeland. In death Celia is as defiant as Hatuey, a native chieftain from the dim past.
The story goes that the Spaniards had condemned the warrior to death. A Priest went to see him to try to save his immortal soul. “Heaven is a wonderful place where there is no hunger, no strife, no suffering.” The condemned appeared unmoved. “Son,” the priest tried again, “Don’t you want to go to heaven?”
“Father,” Hatuey replied. “When Spaniards die, do they also go to heaven?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Then, I’d rather not go.”
As the casket makes its way down the aisle, tears flow down my middle-aged face. I realize I cry for the dead, for my own father, for all of his friends, for a long line of relatives gone before, for a generation, the children of the lost world. I cry for myself and who I might have been.