Don Juanito Told me we were Wrong.

Yesterday I left Mexico City to come back to work in Chilpancingo. I saw the man that parks cars outside in the street and lives inside the building where my mother used to live.

First he apologized because he had to go to Oaxaca this Sunday, and could not be in San Cosme's Church, in Serapio Rendón where the mass for my mother was held; then he told me that my siblings and I had made a mistake. We should've told them much earlier when my mother died, on April 11; then they would've collected a little money to buy her flowers for the mass. We always do it like that, he said.

Don Juanito is right. My mother was alone in her apartment, and we lost contact with the neighbors. She herself was not much involved with building activities.  I saw two neighbors at Church, Don Pepe; he used to fix the TV for her, and Don Tomás; my mother introduced me to him once in the street. Don Pepe told me how proud she was of all of us, how we got so many academic degrees and all.

The priest mentioned our mother a few times during mass, at one point he asked the believers to be on the side of our Pope Benedict, now that the pedophilic activities of the late Mexican priest, Marcial Maciel, have been exposed, I felt that my mother was going to get special treatment in her trip to heaven, if all she had to do was to be better than Maciel.

Afterwards a few of us, siblings and some of our children, went to have a treat at a nearby pastry place in San Cosme street. We talked about what the young ones were doing. My nephew told me that his recent experience teaching Spanish in France was good. I said that his generation will have a tougher life than ours did. Now they will have to know several countries and several languages, that way it will be easier to make a living in a globalized world.

I saw all my sister's children and my brother in law, and felt that my mother left me all that. They left.

I went with my youngest sister to the apartment; she wanted to pick some plants to take home. Now our mother could not take proper care of them. She had many plants in her apartment. I helped her put a few in her car, and then she left.

I remembered how my grandmother kept a garden during the last years of her life, and that my mother had done the same. Now my little sister, was going to keep those plants alive.

Yes, Don Juanito was right. If we had just told the neighbors, they would've collected a few pesos, and would've bought some flowers for my mother. You know, they are not rich; but they know what is important in life.