The Passing of Román Diaz

His name is Román. Roll the “R” and accent the second syllable. I tried to find a pseudonym and modify the events to satisfy the privacy concerns and protocols of the hospice center when I volunteer, but his identity is too strong. He is Román.

A couple of days a week I bring my guitar and go from room to room, offering to play and sing for the patients. Sometimes I’m really welcome, sometimes not. They’ll ask for Western songs, thirties ballads, folk songs, classic guitar, or sometimes for me to go away. I’m an old saloon musician out of Chicago, so I’m used to rejection.

One day I knocked on Román’s door and was welcomed in. The room was full; sons, daughters, grown grandchildren and kids. Young men crowded the corridor, leaving the chairs for the elderly and women with small children.

Román was feeling pretty good, and his face brightened when he saw my guitar. “He was a great musician,” whispered his oldest daughter, and something intangible began to take shape in the room. He and I began a bantering relationship, larded with old men’s sarcasms when he was up to them, and in the coming weeks I was often encouraged to put my guitar aside and talk with him. He’s two or three years older than me, around eighty-seven.

The women sang songs and hymns in Spanish that I’d never heard, simple and easy to follow. But why didn’t I know any of them? I know so many Spanish and Latin American songs; how did I miss these? They knew all my Spanish songs because they were common to the Latin countries. I learned that theirs were Puerto Rican songs, local tunes, rare elsewhere in the Latin world.

One day I learned that Román’s main instrument was the cuatro. I love the cuatro. About the size of an overgrown mandolin, it’s shaped like a medieval sort of cello and sounds like thirteenth-century Spain. Madrigals. Curtsying ladies and bowing gentlemen. Tinkling glasses. Hunting dogs lolling under the banquet table. Hidalgos eyeing other men’s women, and the women flirting back. Román was so pleased that I knew about it. He told one of his sons to bring his personal instrument to show me at my next visit. It’s really beautiful. I squeezed a few simple tunes out of it and he fell asleep. The cuatro went back into its cabinet.

It generally took me five or ten minutes to get out of his room. Abrazos and handshakes from the men, hugs from the older women, sometimes a kiss or two. Children coached to come up to me and thank me, and always that intangible “something” present.

It couldn’t go on forever. One Monday morning around 9:30 I was luxuriating in my bed when the hospice called. Could I come in as soon as possible? They wouldn’t tell me what it was about. Any number of families could have wanted me to play, leading them in a last hymn or other favorite song. I met two supervisors at the nurses’ station and they walked me to Román’s room.

I was asked to leave my guitar outside. His wife got up to give me her chair despite my protests and I sat down. His older daughter went to the cabinet and brought out the cuatro. She bore it in both hands, like a baby being carried to the baptismal font, and handed it to me. A little speech about his wish for me to have his personal instrument, followed by another short word or two from sons and daughters in turn.

Román was lying in his bed, a rose in his right hand, and final peace on his face. He had passed on before I got there. A teen-age girl approached me with a wan smile and a box of tissues. Only then did I realize that I was silently weeping. I looked at the supervisors. We all knew of the strict “no gifts” rule. Kori, the senior, told me it had been approved all the way up the line.

One of Román’s son’s friends drove me to Our Lady of Guadelupe for the funeral. We went directly to the casket. I don’t remember exactly what either of us said, but we’re both musicians so it couldn’t have been too lofty. I greeted his wife and took a seat in the fifth row.

Then the older daughter approached and took me back to the first row. Her mother had asked everyone to move down one place and I was given the first seat in the first row. And finally I understood what I had failed to recognize in Román’s room.

“Sit here,” she said. “You’re family.”

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