EL PASO, Texas — Nothing tears me up as thoroughly as Rodolfo’s cry of anguish in La Boheme when he realizes that Mimi has died. So much pain. So many regrets. A fitting finale to a full life. 

   Most of us will die at home or in a hospital surrounded by family or caring strangers. It’s not natural to die alone. Someone should be there to shed a tear and say our name for the last time. Someone with a warm touch to utter a prayer and a soft adios; someone with a familiar hand to send us away with a fond wish for the journey ahead where with an outstretched hand, La death, waits to greet us all.  Needed is a final resting place where friends and family can visit, place flowers and remember.

   I think about this as I sit in the comfortable church pew and listen to the priest bless the elegant coffin and intone the final prayers at the altar. “May the angels escort thee to paradise.  May the choirs of angels receive thee with Lazarus who once was poor. Mayest thou have eternal rest. May perpetual light shine upon thee.” 

   This is not the case with the undocumented. They die alone in the desert. They die of heat stroke and hypothermia. They drown alone in river currents and they perish on isolated highways headed for unknown destinations.

   They die in the middle of nowhere. They carry no ID and remain nameless in death.  Not a fitting finale for a full life.

   They cross the border to the north for many reasons. It’s not easy to sit idly by when there is so much need. They lack the basics, food, shelter, clothing and medical care.

   These are almost unattainable for many of the poorest of the poor in Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and other Latin American countries, and so they come. They leave with great sorrow but with great courage. They leave behind their families, their country, those things they love the most, and they go to the unknown with hope and deep faith.

   They will look for work to sustain their families. That’s all they want. Work, be it what it might and be it where it will and for as long as it may be necessary. 

   They are taken advantage by their own posing as “coyotes,” by unscrupulous contractors and farmers, thieves and prejudiced people. They’re the nobodies of their country going on to remain nobody somewhere else.

   They begin their long journeys with others like them and so often die alone, left behind without a trace as the others continue on.

   It’s impossible to imagine how hot it can be in the desert. Only when you’ve actually stood under the desert sun might you have an idea of the horror of such a death. The burning sand, the insects, the cactus, the cruel beating sun, the thirst and the desperation.

   Their bleached bones and swollen bodies are all that remain. Without identification they become numbers in sterile morgues, and after years of waiting they’re buried in nameless graves without ceremony and without a prayer. Not a fitting finale at all.

    Does everything even out after we die?  Are we equal in death? Will the angels escort these souls to paradise? Will the choirs of angels be there to receive them and will Lazarus greet them, even though they died alone and were buried as the poorest of the poor. Their names will never be known and there won’t be a gravestone to mark their resting place.

   Who will bring them flowers and clean their graves? Who will know that they were even on this earth? Their families will never know what happened to them. Mothers will never see their sons again, wives will long for their husbands and the children will never know the touch of their father’s rough hand on their cheek. Not a fitting finale at all.

   Death is a great equalizer?

   (Elisa Martínez, a retired speech therapist in El Paso, Texas, is a contributing columnist with Hispanic Link News Service. Email her at [email protected])

   ©2009