My mom killed God in 1996.
At her father’s funeral, in the dusty cemetery of our Mexican border town.
We’d driven overnight to the wake, delirious with grief. He was a beloved patriarch, a pillar of the town, nicknamed El Brujo (the warlock) for his farming miracles and supernatural weather predictions.
He found religion in his later years, and his Pentecostal pastor was delivering the eulogy. My mom couldn’t stand him or how religion had made grandpa less tolerant and joyful, too focused on hell.
The casket was already in the ground, waiting for the dirt. But the pastor kept rambling. My mother held my brother’s and my I’s hands, our heads bowed to the ground.
Then the pastor took a baffling detour to California.
“Right now, the world is a wrong place! In San Francisco, homosexuals are flying their disgusting flags in God’s face!”
Still in the closet, I left my body, slipping outside my grief. My brother and I were both Gay. Even at my grandpa’s funeral, we weren’t safe, reminded we were unloved by God. Nothing is sacred to homophobia.
My mother knew she had two Gay teen sons.
She squeezed our hands so hard her knuckles went white, leaving all of her sweat on our fingers. Then she dropped them, held up her palm, and with fury from her lungs, shouted, “ENOUGH! You have spoken enough!”
She stomped over to the pastor, and for a moment, I actually thought she was going to punch him. But she walked to that hole, grabbed a shovel, and started shoveling, sending plumes of dust into the sun. The men grabbed shovels and followed her lead.
Sermon over. Drama worthy of a telenovela.
She buried more than her father that day. That hateful God, dead as a doorknob, replaced with something as forgiving and all-knowing as a mother’s love.
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