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When I first met him, he had his own paint and roofing business and bragged freely of his age. “I am 57,” he said in his choppy English sweeping his whole lanky body forward. “You see all those walls? I paint them. I get up there and asi, mira, asi!” And he would pull back his sweater to show me his muscle bulging through the yellow sagging skin. I nodded my head in agreement so as not speak or I would be there all day. Plus, God forbid he saw my face of disgust and I would hurt his feelings. To this day, I never knew why he took interest in becoming our neighbor living in the backyard, but he did. I even remember the meeting in our living room where my father and he hashed out the details of the rent on a spring day. “350?” No pause and in vehement agreement he agreed, “Okay, Asi esta bien.” He took his little trailer behind our house and every day he would visit us for breakfast and dinner.

I knew there must have been some family loyalty between him and my father; my family tends to like its privacy. I knew his business was on the decline. But for a man who had a collection of silk bright colored disco shirts, I wondered if his partner had thrown him out. No one ever spoke of that. I cornered my mom one day in the kitchen while she was cooking and even though there wasn’t anyone around she whispered, finally, “Es gay, mariposa, (hand flying motion indicating a butterfly), eso no te importa!” I wondered if for that simple fact it condemned the man to living lonely in his older years, but I wasn’t allowed to say anymore.

The time passed and the days got colder and his bill higher. Each month it seemed that he would have to come beg my father, “Just a little longer, okay? It’s been difficult.” Until one week he stayed at home all the day and came in sometimes to order me for soup. He lost weight the following week and started coughing in multicolored spew into an engraved white handkerchief. My mom would rush to separate any dinner ware he touched. He couldn’t blame stress for this any more. So, now it was his lungs and a bad cold caused by the weather. No one came to visit him during the holidays and as hard as he tried to claim us as family, there was only so much a couple of months of passing by could give a person. A week later he left back to his birth land.

How did he…Who gave it to him?

My grandma called to tell us the news of his passing. In the arms of a sister he rarely spoke to, in a small hospital bed provided by the state. Alone as per his request.

My grandma tended his sister’s shock at the decomposition of his body. All the chronicles that exist are only second hand notions. Why would a man want to hide his own soul and the value of his existence? Nothing made sense to me back then or now. Didn’t he have a young partner?

“It was his lungs.” The doctors were prohibited from saying the name of this very shameful disease to the rest of the family even if everyone already knew. The canker sores were a byproduct of his declining lungs and the paint never helped.

He had a lover. Has anyone called the other person? What’s his name?

But you took that to the grave and either ways, no one would let you give it. Marino, I know someone needs to remember you. I am no one to judge. My only wish was for your death to be more respectful. So on all souls day, I give you the gift of my words and my sincere apology for not speaking all the questions my conscious pushed me for. May you find peace.