Holy Saturday

On Easter Sunday morning, the day Christians celebrate resurrection, life returning, death being defeated, I was choosing my father’s coffin.

Alone.

While bells were ringing somewhere, I was looking at wood. Running my hand over different finishes, listening to someone talk about prices and details as if any of it made sense. As if there were a right way to do this. As if it were possible to choose “well.”

It’s hard to explain what that does to your head. The disconnection. The world saying “life” while you’re dealing with death in its most practical, bureaucratic, irreversible form.

Four years later, I still go back there. Not every day. But when I do, I really do. Like touching something that healed on the outside but never quite settled underneath.

My father’s name was Jesus das Neves. And there’s something about all of this that borders on the absurd. A friend told me: “if it wasn’t so sad, it would almost be poetic.” And I understood. Some coincidences don’t comfort you, they just make everything stranger. As if reality were slightly out of alignment.

Since then, Easter has never just been Easter.

It’s always two things at once. There’s the table, the people, the toasts, the effort of being present. And then there’s that room. That moment. That decision. And the morning after, smelling like wood and endings.