Garden of Memories Float

        It’s September 14th. The sun is in the sign of Scorching, the moon in Mambo and the stars are striped forever at the one-story blond brick, bad-knockoff Greek revival Lamana Panno Fallo Funeral Home,[i] sun-drenched space adjacent to a couple of middling age Live Oaks. Set amidst the hustle and bustle of Veterans Boulevard’s fast food joints, discount carpet stores, tire outlets; an oasis amidst billboards and neon signs, next to the canal on the neutral ground, with its beefy, orange-toothed nutria scurrying unafraid in daytime in their mission to dig huge holes in the trash-covered banks, that drains the former wetland that was Met’ry before asphalt and The Automobile made suburbanization, and therefore commercialization, possible. It is in this building’s deafening silence that WWII veteran Salvatore Aloysius LaRosa is laid out amidst enough floral arrangements to have even the non allergy-prone reaching for Claritin®.           Sal’s two best buddies, Louie Anthony Scalisi and Manny Joseph Chisesi,[i] are standing in front of the coffin with Sal’s grieving widow Rose Pizzolato LaRosa.[ii] Although at this particular moment, grief would be a relief for the two men, anything but the End-of-Days wrath she is dispensing, shredding the deafening silence into jagged ribbons.
          “It’s you two who put my husband in that coffin, Manny. If y’all hadn’t introduced him to those goddamn cherry tomatoes, this would’ve never happened!


[i] Louie Scalisi, Manny Chisesi and Rose LaRosa will also appear in “Merry Widow,” which follows “Garden of Memories.” 

[ii] Rose was sitting in the chair next to Nola at Mr. Frankie’s Chic of Arabi in the last tableau.

[i] Search Terms: Lamana-Panno-Fallo Funeral Home, Crematory, Flower Shop.