That isn’t him.
My friend turned her
back to the casket.
That’s not my father.
Well, it was and it wasn’t; it was his shell,
his outer mold he’d shown the world,
but the undertaker’s hand had
applied the makeup too heavily,
arranged the body too formally,
arms crossed over chest,
chin lowered as if peering down his nose,
in a way that didn’t capture his warm personality
but appeared weirdly peremptory—
so no, it didn’t look like him,
which maybe made it easier to claim
plausible deniability.
My gaze locked with my
friend’s. I won’t remember him like this.
I knew what would come to my mind when I
thought of him: shopkeeper, friend, father of my friend;
I almost feared to ask
her how she would recall him.
What could she say?
Could words begin to convey . . . ?
A good life, she said as she swept hands wide,
taking in the pundit, the crowd
of Christian and Muslim and mainly Hindu mourners
beneath their carport, should be
to return in the next life as a cow.
She shook her head.
She half chuckled, half hiccupped in tears.
Perhaps I’m a bad daughter,
but I don’t want him to come back as a cow.
I believed I understood.
Together, we said,
Trinidad hardly has any cows.
I hugged her. You want him to come back to you.
One glance over her shoulder,
one last look at the casket,
and she agreed:
A good life would be
for my daddy
to return in the next life as my daddy.