It's not just "OUR People"

I saw something on the Internet last week that made me throw up in my mouth a little. Rather than continue from there I will provide you with the article. I apologize for the lack of photos, but I'm actually quite disturbed by the images and I don't want to see my dinner again, I will however include links so you can witness the complete and utter wrongness for yourself. (*Also, I'd like to give myself a big pat on the back for copying the text with my eyes unfocused so I wouldn't have to look at the pictures... YAY Me!)

Puerto Rico corpse kept upright for 3-day wake


SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — A Puerto Rican man has been granted his wish to remain standing — even in death.

A funeral home used a special embalming treatment to keep the corpse of 24-year-old Angel Pantoja Medina standing upright for his three-day wake.

Dressed in a Yankees baseball cap and sunglasses, Pantoja was mourned by relatives while propped upright in his mother's living room.

His brother Carlos told the El Nuevo Dia newspaper the victim had long said he wanted to be upright for his own wake: "He wanted to be happy, standing."

The owner of the Marin Funeral Home, Damaris Marin, told The Associated Press the mother asked him to fulfill her dead son's last wish.

Pantoja was found dead Friday underneath a bridge in San Juan and buried Monday. Police are investigating.
Hosted by Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Now then, as I said it's not just black people doing bizarre and ridiculous shit, apparently our brown brothers and sisters have lost their damned minds as well. Good to know. I'm guessing it's just as cold in PR as it is "in duh D." But the real question is how, at 24, are you knowingly living a lifestyle where it's a really good chance that you will die at such a young age? So much so, that you notify your family ahead of time that in the event of your untimely demise, you'd like to scare the shit out of the kids in your family and be posted up in the corner of your mom's crib in sunglasses and a hat, dead.

We all have family members who do things they probably ought not do, and I'll admit losing them is still hard because we love them but this is just crazy. I'm an adult and would not be in the same room with a standing dead guy, let alone allow my daughter to bear witness to such a thing. Not "no" but "HELL NO!" I'm not knocking the family for carrying out his last wishes but couldn't they have just had a cardboard cut out made and let that be "him standing up?" In a way they are glorifying the lifestyle he led by having done this, the hat, the sunglasses, the pose the whole setup, is probably the reason he's gone at 24 to begin with. Keeping it hood, being gangsta, whatever the hell you call it, it's still a wasted life, and why honor him in such a way? If anything he should be used as an example of how you don't want to live, to these kids that think it's so cool to carry guns, and sell drugs, or whatever.

This guy was 24 years old and he's not here anymore, aside from the morality factor, it's just dammit creepy. The kids who were there should have been traumatized, hell I'm pushing 30 and I'M traumatized. If the children were not disturbed by the image of their dead primo chillin in the corner, then the family really needs to wake up because there will be more wakes far too soon in their near future.