Abuelita

We were gathered together in the church
la familia, dressed in Sunday best and somber.
I saw her cold-looking sallow face
with its typical scowl
and her hands folded across her breast.
The priest was chanting in Latin
and everyone repeated the incantations,
the eerie drone echoing off the ceiling.
Usually Carlos and Lita were rowdy
laughing raucously as they clutched their cervesas
but today there were no cervesas, at least not now,
and nobody told any jokes.
I thought of her life, a complex tapestry of
homemade tortillas, staunchly ironed clothes
and grandchildren on her lap, whom she cared for
while their parents were out "living their lives";
how some of her daughters married alcoholics
and her husband occupied Hiroshima,
and how all she really wanted
was to leave this arid Utah valley
and go back home to México.
And I thought,
after all these years,
surrounded by us, her people
in the church she went to once a year
it must be nice to finally get some sleep.