Your Grandma's Dead, Baby, Do the Conga

How Gloria Estefan's "Conga" took my grandmother to the Other Side

“Rise and shine, you two,” my mother whispered, peeking her head into the guest bedroom where my girlfriend and I were sleeping.

It was 1997, and I’d driven my girlfriend to Michigan to meet my family for the first time. We’d made it through night one without incident.

“I made some coffee,” my mom continued. “And there are hot scones in the kitchen. Oh, and Grandma’s dead.”

My mom has a talent for delivering bad news as an afterthought. In my line of work, we call it burying the lede.

“I made your favorite brownies. Oh, and I may have ovarian cancer.”

“Your cousin just got into a great prep school. Which reminds me, your father and I have decided that we’re not paying your college loans.”

We jumped out of bed and ran downstairs. My dad was standing in the living room, frozen in mid-stride, as if he’d forgotten where he was going and what exactly he was supposed to do next. He saw us and pointed towards Grandma’s room just a few yards away. The door was open and her body was laid out on the bed, exactly as they'd found her, her tiny head still peeking out from under her favorite quilt, the one that always smelled (at least to my nose) like mildew and vanilla. 

She died in her sleep, my dad told us. They hadn’t noticed at first because, as we all knew, she tended to look like a corpse when she slept. (As kids, my brother and I were fascinated by her eerie ability to seemingly stop breathing during a nap, and we often debated whether she was hiding from predators.) But after repeatedly trying to wake her, they realized it might be actual rigor mortis and not just her usual morning stiffness.

My dad and I held onto each other and cried. With tears still streaming down his face, he looked at me and said, “She was a bitch, wasn’t she?”

“She was,” I nodded. “A colossal bitch.”

We burst into laughter. Not because it was an inappropriate thing to say, but because it was a relief to finally say the word out loud. I loved her, but she was a bitch. The kind of bitch who scowls at babies and undertips waiters. The kind of bitch who accuses her son of turning up the thermostat in an attempt to kill her and steal his inheritance. The kind of bitch who assumes that her grandson recommended Harold & Maude because the septuagenarian leading lady commits suicide on her 80th birthday, which was clearly a subliminal message that she should off herself at 80. The kind of bitch who, on the last night of her life, reminded her daughter-in-law that she was a disappointment to her.

We were sad she was gone. But when a 94-year-old woman dies in her sleep, in her own bed, without any suffering or illness, leaving a family who has had quite enough of her bitchy attitude, the last thing you'd call it is a tragedy.

It took only minutes for the paramedics to arrive, followed closely by the coroner and funeral director. While the medical professionals examined her body, the director tried to console us.

“I’m so sorry about your grandmother,” he told me, and it sent a shiver down my spine. Not because of the sentiment, but because there was something about him that reminded me of Jonathan Frid from Dark Shadows. His words had a whispered menace, and he held on to certain vowels just a little too long. "So sooooorry about your graaaaandmother.”

Also, as far as I could tell, he didn’t have a neck. When he turned to look at you, he had to bring his entire body with him.

The cause of death was determined to be “natural causes” and the body shuffled away. The whole process happened so quickly that I wondered if they were being timed. Were funeral homes now working on commission? Was it like Glengarry Glen Ross? “First prize for bringing in the most bodies is a Cadillac Eldorado. Second prize is you’re fired.”

But when I wandered outside, I began to understand the need for haste. The street was filled with teenage girls brandishing pom-pons and practicing their high kicks. A farmer was roughly pulling a pygmy donkey into position on top of a float that vaguely resembled a pink birthday cake. A man dressed as a large brownish blob, either meant to be Mr. Potato Head or a cancerous testicle, tumbled to the ground as he tried to find his equilibrium. 

I stood on the front porch and stared out at the chaos. My girlfriend came out and handed me a cup of coffee. 

“Is there a parade today?” She asked.

“God I hope so,” I said.

We watched as my grandmother was carried into the waiting hearse. As if supplying a soundtrack to her departure, the birthday donkey brayed in protest and Gloria Estefan’s “Conga” blared from speakers mounted in a convertible Hot Rod. 

“Feel the fire of desire/ As you dance the night away/ Cause tonight we're gonna party'/ Till we see the break of day.”

When we ventured back inside, my mom told us that what we'd just seen was a parade — or at least the staging area for a parade — and not the Fellini hallucination I'd feared. With little else to do with our day, we decided a parade might be just the thing to lift our spirits. So we walked downtown and sat in the grass with our neighbors, none of whom had any idea that we'd just lost a family member. 

When the parade began, we laughed and passed around a jug filled with wine and voted for our favorite floats — a tie between the retirement home, which we agreed should be renamed “Praying for the Sweet Release of Death,” and the local Jiffy Mix factory, in which truck drivers threw mini-boxes of pancake mix at the crowd like projectile weapons. After a while, we got so caught up in the excitement that we completely forgot why we’d been sad in the first place. 

And then my mom saw her. “Look," she said, pointing into the distance. “There’s Grandma.”

Sure enough, there she was. The hearse, which I’d personally witnessed my grandmother’s body being loaded into just five minutes earlier, was slowly driving down Main Street, somewhere between the marching band and the cowboy cavalcade. The neckless funeral director was behind the wheel, waving at the crowd and throwing miniature Butterfingers at the children. 

He spotted us and smiled broadly, exchanging a meaningful gaze that seemed to say, “I know and you know there’s a dead body in this hearse, but let’s not ruin everybody's fun by drawing attention to it, okay?”

So we just waved back and quietly said another goodbye to Grandma, and tried to ignore the absurdity that a woman who had gone out of her way to make everybody around her miserable was being given a bon voyage parade, with dozens of strangers she’d never met cheering for her and applauding her as she made her way towards her final resting place.

Children were sprinting towards the hearse, grabbing for the falling candy and narrowly avoiding being crushed by the front tires. Somewhere in the distance, Estefan was serenading the surreal scene. “Better get yourself together/ And hold on to what you got!” I never paid much attention to the lyrics until that moment, but it suddenly seemed like the perfect score for a funeral procession.

We watched as the hearse was surrounded by prepubescents, pounding on the windows and howling for more treats. Fueled by sugar, it didn't seem unreasonable that they might roll over the hearse and pull Grandma into the street, thrashing at her body like a piñata. 

We could’ve said something. But who wants to spoil a parade?