CONCLUSION

Cindy received the phone call that Raul Valesquez died on Holy Thursday three and a half years later.

In his fifty-six years, he had lived a rich life, richer than the jewels she now owned, richer than those who might live thirty years longer than he. But they were all here; gangsters, homeless people, squatters, church elders; Latino, black, white and everyone in between. He welcomed them all, even as she knew he was not her to physically greet them, he welcomed them all. Some knew him for the forty months that he had been a deacon, going to the streets to love the people that no one else wanted, giving them food, talking to them, and daring them to be their friend. Some knew him as the hero who had healed a beaten girl and who had been acquitted after evil tried to nail him down. Some knew him as a teacher whose love could melt the coldest soul.

And some knew him as the friend who they had loved, those that he would have called friends. They stood together long after the minister had left and the others departed for lives they knew they had to go on with. She was among them. They stood together, she, Jonathan, Raven, Carmen, Carlos, Cindy, Russell. That was when she began to cry. Jonathan pointing at the sky. They all looked, to be greeted by a rainbow so glorious it seemed to stretch forever in the sky. And the wind blew through the trees, he was there, and that forever, the minstrel would sing his songs for all the world to hear.