Why I'm Not Going To Your Funeral

A Note on This Story

First, I want to say that I wrote this story a long time ago. Like 15 years ago. Like fifteen years ago while I was in prison fifteen years ago.

At the time, I was teaching in a program that helped inmates earn their G.E.D. And to be honest, I didn’t volunteer out of some noble mission to uplift others. I did it for selfish reasons. Everything I did, I did it out of selfishness. The program gave me thirty minutes of free time on the computer before and after each class.

Back then, I had this dream of writing a collection of short stories, something like Drown by Junot Díaz. Raw, honest, and immigrant kid-type stuff. And this story was titled The Funerals. It was one of the first I ever finished. But it was a mess. A hot-ass mess. At least twice as long as it is now. Sentences going nowhere, paragraphs stacked like laundry. But I saved it. Let it live in my heart and computer, untouched, buried like the characters in the story itself.

Years later, when I applied to the NYU Creative Writing Program, I dug it out, cleaned it up just enough, and submitted it as part of my writing sample. It still sucked. I remember thinking, They must see something I don’t, because to me, this shit is just a bunch of chicken scratch.

I never touched the story again. Three more years it sat in my computer.

Then, recently, like this week, I read Etel Adnan’s Shifting the Silence, and something in that book woke up a bunch of feelings I thought I’d already written through. That quiet reflection. The clarity. The grief. And right after that, yesterday, I watched John Mulaney’s Everybody’s Live, where one of the episodes centered on funerals.

That was the sign.

I pulled this story out one more time, and gave it another whirl, the old college try, and this version is the one that finally feels right. Or at least, as right as I can make it today.

So here it is, for your enjoyment, and your discomfort. Thank you for reading! - Big Mike Castle!!!

Why I'm Not Going To Your Funeral by Miguel A. Castillo Jr.

My cousin Jeannette and I were walking home from the video game store on 181st Street. I had just spent my last five dollars on a used copy of Tekken, all scratched up but still good enough if you had the right touch. I was walking toward my Papa Buelo's house, cutting down Saint Nicholas like I always did, dodging delivery guys on bikes and old ladies with grocery carts. That’s when I heard it. And it was angry.

Cock-a-doodle-do!

Loud. Sharp. Echoing down the block with authority when it had no business being there.

At first, I thought I imagined it. Maybe someone had a chicken coop tucked behind their building or something. But then it happened again.

Cock-a-doodle-do!

And this time it sounded closer, angrier, like the animal had something to prove. I stopped right in front of the Rivera Funeral Home, and for a second, I felt this chill crawl down my back, my grandfather’s voice coming down from two blocks away and slapping me for even standing there.

“That place is for drug dealers, assassins, pimps, and whores. I’m a working man, a decent man. Don’t you ever let them lay me out in there. I mean it.”

He’d always talk about it and say that La Muerte was coming for him. That after eleven kids and thirty-something grandkids, his job was done. And even though I believed him, I’d always laugh. Not at him, never at him, but at the idea. At the strange truth that death makes no promises. That when you're dead, you're dead. Where your body is dressed up and laid out to be stared at for hours on end doesn't matter. It shouldn't matter. And yet it does.

My cousin Jeannette would laugh too, quietly, with her eyes, behind closed doors. Not out of disrespect, but out of love for the man who ruled over our family with the kind of authority that only working-class dignity and sacrifice can give you. He would have taken her laughter as disrespect. My Papa Buelo wasn’t to be fucked with. Not when he was young and fighting to raise his kids in this country. And not now, with his back bent like a question mark and the veins in his hands bulging like subway maps.

He once smacked my cousin Joanna cold across the face just for slurping her soup. Not because he hated noise, but because he hated what it meant to forget decorum. “Act like you’ve been raised right,” he’d say. Even if we hadn’t. Even if we were learning the rules as we went, piecing together our Americanness like a puzzle with too many missing pieces.

To him, the Rivera Funeral Home wasn’t just a building. It was a symbol. A border. A warning. A place where people like us ended up when we’d strayed too far from what we were supposed to be. It was the final punishment. The last insult. And if you ended up there, it was because you’d already lost.

I too never wanted to go in there. I was afraid of all the gangsters. But that rooster crow pulled at me like a fishhook in my chest. I couldn’t resist. I had to find out. Why a chicken?

I walked through the open door, and no one stopped me. That’s the part that still gets me. I was thirteen years old, chubby, awkward, in a stained Yankees tee and shorts that didn’t fit right, my knees ashy as hell. And yet no one said a word. No one even looked at me. It was like the whole room was under some spell.

And that’s when I saw it.

There was a coffin at the front of the room. Mahogany, shiny, the kind you get if you’ve done dirt and made money from it. And standing on top of the dead man's chest was this big-ass cock. I mean huge. A monster of a bird, a baby T-Rex, black and red feathers glistening like blood and oil, eyes wild and alive. It wasn’t just crowing. It was screaming, like it was mourning, cursing, and singing battle songs all at once.

I stood there frozen. Not scared, but almost confused. Like I’d stepped into another world. And the smell hit me too. Not just the flowers and embalming fluid, but the faint smell of feed, feathers, sweat, marijuana, and Presidente beer. The rooster had brought its people and energy with it. The kind you feel in backyards before a fight, where men gather in circles and money changes hands and blood hits dirt.

I sat down on a bench in the back. I didn’t know what else to do. There was this woman next to me, maybe in her sixties, hair pulled tight into a bun, wearing one of those long black Dominican church dresses with the little pearls at the collar. She looked at me like a piece of meat. She had a tissue in one hand and a bag of sunflower seeds in the other. I asked her, real quiet, “Señora… what’s going on here?”

She stopped looking at me and trained her eyes on the bird. She cracked a seed between her lipsticked teeth and said, “Ese hombre era el mejor gallero de todo el Alto Manhattan. That man in the box. He trained that bird since it was an egg. They say that rooster never lost a fight. Never.”

I blinked. I didn’t know what a gallero was, but I figured it had to do with roosters. I sat there watching this beast of a bird stomp on its master’s chest like it was guarding him in death the same way it must’ve fought for him in life.

And then she looked at me and said something I never forgot.

“Animals are more loyal than people. The bird is crying because he knows his fight is over.”

Man, that hit me. I didn’t even know why. I didn’t know this man and his rooster. Didn’t even really believe in that kind of thing. Animal loyalty, mystical signs, and all that. But that moment stuck. Maybe because it felt like I wasn’t supposed to see it. Like I’d wandered into something sacred, raw, weird, and Dominican as fuck. It branded itself on my brain.

I didn’t tell Papa Buelo about it. I knew he’d slap the spirit right out of me for stepping foot in Rivera’s. But from that day on, every time me and Jeannette passed by the funeral home, I’d look at it a little different. I’d look inside to see if anything interesting was happening. Maybe a pit bull. There were a lot of pit bull fights in Washington Heights too. I just couldn’t forget the champion rooster on that man in the coffin. The silence of the room, and the screaming. And how, for one strange afternoon, Saint Nicholas Avenue became a place where animals, the dead, and the living shared one last cry together.

After that, I became obsessed with funerals and wakes. When I was promoted to sergeant in the Marines, they assigned me to be a funeral sergeant. For nearly six months, I officiated over five or six funerals a day and did whatever else they told me to do. Some days I’d drive a sick Marine to a doctor’s appointment at the Navy base in Connecticut. The next day I’d be loading a cache of rifles, pistols, and grenades into the back of a Humvee, transporting them from our base in Long Island to Stamford.

The Admin Platoon sergeants had shown us how to fold the American flag. Sharp, crisp creases. Every movement was deliberate and full of meaning. My friend Corporal Bernal and I rehearsed it until it was muscle memory. I’d take the folded flag, step forward, and, in my most formal military voice, deliver the script:

“On behalf of the President of the United States, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, and a grateful nation, please accept this flag as a token of our appreciation for your loved one’s honorable and faithful service to our country.”

Then I’d about-face and march into the background while Corporal Bernal played Taps on his electric bugle.

Some days we did all the funerals before noon. Each one had its own rhythm, but they all echoed the last.

Sometimes, at the request of the family, we’d stay behind. They’d share drinks and food, stories about the Marine we’d just buried. They’d tell us how proud they were of him, how he lived for the Corps. One time, I shook the hand of a Marine who had fought at the Chosin Reservoir in Korea. He had no fingers, just nubs. A chill ran up my arm and into my heart. I kept a straight face, looked him in the eyes, and thanked him for his service. He took us to a fancy Italian restaurant in Scarsdale and fed us lobster spaghetti, breadsticks, wine, and beer.

Another time, we buried a Marine who lived to be ninety-nine years old. When it came time to present the flag to his family, no one came forward. We looked around. Only empty chairs and more silence. Still, we played Taps. Still, we folded the flag the way we were trained to. I carried it to our van.

Bernal liked to think the old man had outlived everyone. That there was simply no one left. I liked to think he was an ornery bastard like me. That he pissed off his whole family, never apologized, and died the way he lived. Alone. Stubborn. Maybe even proud.

That’s the story I tell myself. It’s sadder. Cooler. A Marine version of a Western ending.

I still have that flag in my closet. I think about the old man all the time. The flag still smells like the woodlands of Long Island.

After my grandfather had lost the strength to lift his arms and walk on his own, my dad and I would go to his house every other day to shave him with a Bic razor and a cup of hot water. The little blue ones that cost fifty cents. He’d sit him by the window and shave him carefully, gently, like a barber giving a final cut. He cleaned him up. Gave him dignity. My Papa Buelo would say, “I’ll always be a military man, and a military man has to shave every morning.”

Watching that made me love my father more. It also made me realize that one day, I too would have to do this. That I’m going to have to clean my father the way I now clean my son, with unconditional love. Not once did I see my dad flinch or raise his voice like he would against my mother. Not once did he act like the old man was a burden. Maybe my son will feel the same way about me one day. This gives me a reason not to become that old, salt dog dick bastard Marine I used to be. That old salt dog dick bastard who outlived everyone in Long Island.

We didn’t talk much toward the end, my grandfather and I. Not like we used to. But sometimes I’d visit and we’d sit together in silence, the TV tuned to whatever boxing match was on. We watched Ali, Tyson, Foreman. Talked about who would beat who. About Tyson's speed, Ali's mind, Joe Louis' pinpoint power. He loved to talk about Henry, who “could’ve been a champ.” He always said I should stop boxing. That I was a better Marine, a better cop.
“You’re not like Henry,” he told me once. “You’re built for something else.”

But he didn’t know what Mr. Colón was teaching me in that little gym off Broadway. He didn’t know I needed boxing. Not to win, but to survive.

Right before he died, I went to see him and it didn’t go well. As I was in the hallway, he tried to call out to me. His voice cracked. Low, fragile, almost a whisper. And I didn’t wait. I was impatient. It was the last time I saw him alive. His face looked like someone was holding a flame to his feet, and I couldn’t bear it. So I left. The next morning, Jeannette’s daughter Jissy found him. Dead in his sleep. I’ve replayed that moment a thousand times, trying to remember what he might’ve said. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was everything. I’ll never know.

The last time I wore my Marine Dress Blue uniform was at his funeral. I also like to think of that day as my last day as a Marine and as a cop. As my family complimented me on how strong and handsome I was, I couldn’t stop looking over at his casket, trying to sneak a peek. I wanted to see the old man, and I was scared. Jeannette was eating Skittles like she was in the park, cracking jokes with me, saying that she wished Papa could see me in my uniform. And how happy he must be that he isn’t in the Rivera, where we had seen the fighting chicken crowing on that man’s chest. There was no smell of weed and beer. We were just regular Dominicans.

I walked up to his casket with my father. My father bent down and said something to him in Spanish. He cried a little and then kissed him on the lips. I had only seen my father cry once. His face full of tears after he had hit my mother and was begging her for forgiveness. I followed my father and kissed my grandfather’s powerful hand, which was placed on his midsection, and asked him forgiveness for leaving him like that a couple of nights before. I lifted his lapel and, in his breast inside pocket, I inserted a 9mm round from my Sig Sauer service gun and a 5.56mm round from my M16 service rifle. Like when warriors placed coins on each other’s eyes for payment to the other side. He looked good. Like the flame had been lifted. He was made up so beautifully, he looked young. I wiped the powder from my lips.

The next day they buried him in Woodlawn Cemetery, next to Celia Cruz, his favorite singer.

A couple of years after my grandfather died, I attended another funeral. This time, I was in my NYPD uniform. I was ordered to be there. It ended up being the most intense funeral I’ve ever stood through, even more than the funeral of the champion rooster.

An officer had been killed in action. His name was Kevin. I didn’t know him. He was a detective on the Grand Larceny team. He died chasing and fighting a computer thief.

There were three guys. Two got away, but Kevin caught the third. As they struggled, Kevin collapsed. His heart gave out on the street.

I read about it in the paper. Saw it on the news. Cops don’t need reports to pass a story. Rumors fly faster than bullets. I played it out in my head a thousand times. The struggle. The adrenaline. The yelling. The thief screaming, “Fuck you, pig,” as he got away. Kevin reaching into his chest like he was trying to pull the pain out. His knees slamming into the concrete.

I want to cry as I’m typing this now. It’s not my story. But it also is. Because it lives in my mind rent-free. I think about Kevin and the computer thief all the time.

I stood in front of Kevin’s open casket, in the same room where I had once stood in front of my grandfather. I couldn’t stop staring at Kevin’s face. The morticians had done their job. Covered the bruises. Smoothed the skin. But I could still see the fight. What really got me, though, was his hair. It was perfect. I kept wondering how the hell they got it to look so good.

Then I thought of my mother, standing over her brother’s casket years ago. She told me all she could do was stare at his hair, the way it held. She said she thought he was going to wake up and say, “Don’t cry, mamita. Everything’s going to be alright.” I realized that must’ve been how she felt as a little girl. Frozen. Wanting to believe death wasn’t real.

My platoon sergeant from the academy, Eric, was there too. He and Kevin had come up together. Eric was tall, slim, a swimmer. Clean eater. Disciplined.

“Kevin ate like shit,” he told me. “Fried chicken, soda, candy bars. I warned him. Told him this job’ll kill you. It doesn’t care about you. It won’t love you back. You have to work out and eat right.”

I try to picture Kevin alive. Smiling like in his picture. But all I can see is him clutching his chest. That fire in his veins and heart.

I think of if it was me chasing that computer thief. Would I have caught him, would I have beaten him?

I think about a chase I was in a couple of weeks before. I had trapped a kid between two cars. He was stronger than me. We fought. I was losing and he was only sixteen. Another cop ran up and slammed his head against the hood of a patrol car. Hard. The kid immediately stopped resisting.

“That’s how you do these little fuckers, Castillo. You can’t be nice out here. You have to be a wolf.”

In a boxing ring, under the Marquess of Queensberry rules, I’m dangerous. But out on the streets, where there are no rules, in Harlem and Washington Heights, where everybody’s scrapping for something, I’m not so sure.

Toward the back of the room, I noticed a woman crying. Crying like the rooster. Guttural, broken, real. Something wasn’t right. Eric told me she was a cop too, but she wasn’t in uniform. Two officers in dress blues were holding her up.

Those weren’t the tears of a mother, wife, or sister. This was someone who had loved him. And now, there would be no more fighting for her either.

I walked away from Kevin’s casket discouraged. Disillusioned. This motherfucker died for a computer. That was the day I realized I didn’t want to be a cop anymore. But I was stuck.

Before leaving, I looked back at Kevin one last time. And I had the most absurd thought: What if it had been me in that casket?

Would Corporal Bernal fold my flag, sharp corners, and crisp creases? Would he hand it off the way we practiced, solemn, tight, with that deep voice we trained for? Who would play Taps for me? Would the bugle sound clean, or would it crack like my grandfather's broken voice?

What about my daughter, barely two years old? Would she understand why everyone around her was crying? Would she reach for me in the coffin, calling out “Daddy,” not knowing I wasn’t coming back?

Would her mother have to explain it every night? Would she bring her to my grave or keep her away to protect her? Would my father be strong enough to hold my mother and brothers up?

Would my father kiss my lips the way he kissed his father’s? Would he whisper something in Spanish that nobody else could hear? Would one of my brothers kiss my hand?

Who else would be crying for me?

Who would be my rooster? Who would scream for me? Who would be my old Dominican lady in black church clothes, telling people that I was a good man, and loyal like a dog underneath all the hard edges?

Would any of the women from my past sneak in through a side door and take a seat in the back?

Would any of my Marine brothers tell a story about me that made the whole room laugh?

Would anyone talk about the books I read, the movies I watched, and the way I boxed and worked out, and then ate like shit too?

Would someone bring up the fights me and my brothers got into as kids? The poems and stories I wrote in secret?

Who would place the rounds in my breast pocket? One from my service pistol. One from my M16.

Would they do it right, like I did for Papa Buelo? Would someone find that grenade I stole from the cache in Connecticut?

Would they remember the man I was trying to become? Or just the man I used to be?

I stood outside the funeral home for a couple of minutes, trying not to think. Then I walked some. The wind on 189th Street slapped my uniform like it had something to say. But I said nothing. Not a word. I just thought.

I’m impatient again. And tired. And I said to myself— that’s why I’m not going to your funeral, funerals are for the living.

I don’t need to see another half-opened box to know that you’re gone. I don’t need flowers or speeches, or long lines of people pretending they loved you the most. I don’t need that performance. That pressure to cry on cue. That awkward small talk between grief and gossip.

I’ll remember you my way. In the mess. In the noise. In the places we laughed or fought or said too much or didn’t say enough. That’s where you’ll stay. Not in a casket. Not under glass. But in the cracks and corners of the life we shared, real, unpolished, alive in memory.

I don’t need to see that shit. I’ve seen too much already. I’ve folded too many flags, and kissed too many foreheads, and wedding rings. I’ve handed over too many symbols that never made anyone whole again. I’m out of bullets. Out of tears that mean something. Out of space for more scripted goodbyes.

So I walked. Let the wind hit me. Let it take whatever was left of that moment. And I kept going, without turning back.