Enjoy your life
It will be all right
Forever love


Out the window of my simple home I hear the sounds of a loud, happy brass band. Hundreds of people are walking down our dusty road, on the edge of the continent, between a crocodile reserve and the bright blue ocean.

I knew what was going on. It was Gustavo‘s funeral procession.
I could see dozens of faces I knew. They walked solemnly, dressed in their normal clothing, T-shirts and shorts, work clothes, and halter tops.

The music was joyful, their faces were plain, sad or grim. Instinctively I knew to join them. Without thinking about it I threw on my nearest shirt and some flip-flops to walk into the courtyard. This is our community mourning Gustavo. I walked into the back of the pack, just in front of the motorcycles and cars trailing the mourners. Hands folded I shuffled behind the brass band, loudly playing music that has likely been played before, at many a funeral. A few people sung the words aloud.

In front of me I noticed someone’s backpack that said in English:
Enjoy your life

Together we followed the hearse to the cemetery just a hundred meters away. I stood on the far edge of the cemetery next to the yellow and white taxis. Gustavo worked as a taxi driver. All the people stood around the other gravesites in a large circle. Some gravesites had little houses with steep-pitched roofs. Others were merely thick concrete slabs. A few were simple makeshift crosses.

Once again I was on the edge of life and death. A little boy walked by wearing a T-shirt that said in English:
It will be all right

Then the casket came out, a big heavy, beautiful wooden casket, with only four men struggling to carry him to his final resting place. The pallbearers dodged the parked motorcycles avoiding something dead in the sand that an adorable dog rolled in. I stood quietly, arms folded like the taxi drivers, peacefully watching it all… remembering Gustavo and praying for his immortal soul. Perhaps the only gringo there.

After they lowered him into the ground the taxi drivers all came to their taxis. All at once they honked their horns in unison. A loud, long taxi wail mourning one of their own.

We stood patiently as men carried five-gallon bucket fulls of concrete to seal the crypt for well loved Gustavo. He was our Delegado for two terms before he became a taxi driver.

The band struck up another happy song. I stood there in my ragged beach clothes. A woman walked by wearing a T-shirt that simply said, in English:
Forever love

The wind picked up, the sun was about to set. I felt it was time to disappear, slip away from the assembled group to write these words.

I walked the hundred meters back towards my home on the windswept Playa, slowly and solemnly, while thanking Gustavo for the clear messages received, and praying for those souls in the cemetery.
Rest in peace.

I kept repeating those clear signs to myself, over and over, so as to deeply remember the only three written messages I saw, magically all in English:

Enjoy your life
It will be all right
Forever love