Souvenir Photo Studio, by Al Bourassa: Saturday October 19, 2019 Funeral

Saturday, October 19, 2019

Saturday October 19, 2019 Funeral

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Saturday October 19, 2019

We left here at 9am, picked up Adiela and Ana Julia to go for a cousin Anotonio's funeral in Cali. Cristina says this man was always nice to them when they were young, and it would be a chance to meet a lot of her Mom's family.. Like usual, it takes wedding or funerals for family to see each other.

There are 3 toll booths, both ways, and it takes almost 1.5 hours to get to Cali dodging transport trucks doing 80 kph in the fast lane and motorcycles doing the same in the slow lane. Then it was another 45 minutes of heavy traffic within Cali. The lanes are very narrow, bumper-to-bumper ttraffic with suicide riders on motorcycles riding the lines and crossing in front of you, daring you to hit them... It is very stressful.

At one stop light a kid about 14 comes with a squirt bottle and a squeegee and I shake my head No, the windshield is clean. He still slaps the squeegee on my screen, this is a ploy of theirs that you will be resigned to let them continue. I opened my door and told him to never touch my car without permission. He stood there dumbfounded.

Then Adiela gets on my case that this Cali, and the kid could pull a knife and kill us all. I am the one at fault and a new car is just garbage to them and not worth our lives, and on,.. and on,... and on. I asked her to cease and desist at least 8 times but she just kept going. Even a loud request was ignored. I was pissed, and they hadn't even contributed one peso to the trip. Mom and Cristina stayed out of the row thankfully.

We finally get to the Funeral Home which is, by Colombian standards, a magnificent brick building with underground parking, many viewing rooms, spacious bathrooms, free coffee and underground free parking. It was easy to find all the family, very few I knew. I sat in the cafeteria and stayed out of the way. It was a bit of a shock to see such a beautiful structure, set-up, and well-run operation.

Niece Natalia came to retrieve some packages that we had muled up for her and we got some packages to bring back to niece Ana.

About 1:15 they wheel out the rented coffin and a lot of them pile into a rented bus, which we follow to the church not too far away for the 2pm funeral. The cousin had a nice turn-out as he was obviously well-liked. 3 people spoke and got good applause. The music was by a lady in a wheelchair with a guitar, nice voice, and 2 back-up singers. The guitar was set much too loud though, ruining the nice vocals.

At 3pm we all get to the car, I was about to apologize for my loudness, Adiela installs Mom in the back seat and walks away. She caught a cab and then the bus home. This was a long time coming and it actually made me smile. She is always critical in the car and never has anything nice to say, so I guess I won't have to put up with the negativity any longer. WooHoo. So much stress relieved....

The trip back was almost bliss. I even slowed down in time to successfully pass my first radar trap.

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I hope you enjoy the pictures. That was the day’s excitement.

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