by Fr. Evan Winter
Hispanic Ministry
Pastor, St. John in Minden and Holy Family in Heartwell
As a child, I was morbidly afraid of death and dying. Both of my grandmothers died when I was 10, and I didn’t go to either funeral because of that fear. And, while I dreaded my own death less as I grew, I didn’t lose my fear of corpses. After four years as a priest, I had done anointings and funerals, but I still had never touched a dead body.
Then COVID happened. Not just any COVID. Hispanic-Nebraskan COVID-19.
In the city of Lincoln, COVID hit the Hispanic community first. One of the very first cases of COVID spread in Lincoln took place at a Cristo Rey Parish adoration hour. COVID was stronger back then than it is now, I’m sure. This, combined with high levels of obesity, diabetes, and kidney problems in the community, caused many early deaths.
Our funeral numbers rose. And here, amidst this tragedy, was me, a very white priest, accustomed to the quiet, scheduled and manicured, white, Midwestern grieving process—who still hadn’t touched a dead body.
One evening I got a call: a Hispanic man in his 50s or 60s was brain dead and not breathing on his own. The hospital wanted to remove the ventilator, and the family wanted me.
I had never met the family before, but I went in and anointed him, they removed the ventilator, and he died. The family was distraught, but this had been a while in coming. We made funeral arrangements. Everything seemed to be going smoothly. The funeral rosary would be the next evening, and the family would stay in the church all night until the Mass the next day; a fairly normal practice.
The evening of the rosary arrived. The funeral director wheeled the casket into the parish hall, where the family stopped him. Before the body went into the church for the rosary, they wanted some alone time with it. The funeral director opened the casket, and there was the deceased, in all his finery, with minimal, if any, makeup or embalming. With a shriek, two or three women of the family (not his wife, I don’t think) proceeded to throw themselves on the body, weeping and wailing.
“Okay,” I thought, awkwardly standing there, “everyone expresses grief in their own way, I guess.”
Then one of the mourners proceeded to pass out. I tried not to follow suit as I prepared to call 911. But then, one of the male relatives, cool as a cucumber, reached into a large bag, pulled out a bottle of rubbing alcohol, and rubbed some on the woman’s cheeks and neck until she revived. He had been expecting exactly this. Just another day in the family. A few minutes later, the wailing women were making burial arrangements with the funeral director, calm as could be.
When I told the pastor, Father Ramon Decaen, he shrugged. “This is why I don’t like to have the rosary the day after the death,” he said, “They need time to rest, and eat, and drink.”
When I told the Passionist Sisters who served the community about it, they laughed. “The family was from Mexico City, weren’t they?” “How did they know?” I wondered.
While the most memorable encounter with death from my time in Hispanic Ministry, this is by no means the only encounter. I’ve seen families pray a novena of rosaries after the funeral, so their loved ones might go to heaven quickly. I’ve seen home shrines arranged for loved ones. I’ve been able to celebrate the Day of the Dead (Nov. 2), where some have cemetery picnics, and others make fun of both death and the rich together by dressing up as the skeleton aristocrat “La Catrina.”
I’ve been at the funerals of young yet holy friends, including Father Ramon Decaen himself, where grief was combined with peace and joy in a way I never saw before; and Cecilia Meza, whose relatives invited a mariachi to sing love songs at the gravesite, and it didn’t feel out of place at all. I’ve seen parishioners invite dying relatives into their homes, so that people who love them can take care of them as they die. And yes, I have now touched dead bodies, and survived.
We believe in the communion of saints. But it wasn’t until COVID at Cristo Rey that I saw people who actually live as if death is a tragedy, but that their dead friends and family members are still completely part of the family. Death is sad, but it need not be creepy: it’s part of life, with its own eternal meaning and even its own joys.
