Let Me Tell You About My Dead Friend Harry
Harry had a heart attack in a underwater cave in Mexico. Getting him home to Dallas was the hard part.
You sometimes have to laugh in the face of death and if Harry was alive he would be laughing too.
It took six of us to move Harry, we struggled under his bulk. He was a big man and the rough cut pine box corners bit into our hands on the shoulder of the road going into Puerto Morelos. We got him up high enough to slide the box from the bed of one pickup into the bed of another. Nobody wanted to be the one who dropped him.
There was a plane to catch, American Airlines Cargo in Cancún, and that was it. Get his ass on the plane. No time to be solemn about it.
My name is Kay, and I moved to the Riviera Maya to explore underwater caves in 1992. I thought I’d stay for 6 months and instead stayed 27 years.
My friend Harry was from Dallas. A stocky-built lawyer with a gold diver’s Rolex on his wrist, a gold chain around his neck, a gold wedding band. He was a cave diver and he came down a few times a year with his buddies to dive the cave systems along the coast. We finished every visit the same way. Dinner at Papaya Republic in Puerto Aventuras and Harry with a snifter of flaming Sambuca and three coffee beans sitting in the bottom at the head of the table.
He came down that last trip with Jack. Jack was Dallas too, older, up in his late sixties, a marathon runner, lean as a rail. Next to big burly Harry the two of them looked like a setup for a joke. An odd couple who had been diving together for years.
Harry and Jack were both experienced enough they did not need guides. They were diving Chac Mool Cenote on their own, a cave system Gary and I had discovered and mapped years before. Their dive, on this particular Saturday, went well and they were on their way out of the cave as planned.
Jack leading, Harry flashed his light at Jack indicating a problem, but not a panic. Harry got on the line to follow it out. That line, kite string, is a safety measure so you can find your way out in the dark. He had a heart attack in the cave. Jack led him out, yet Harry died on the surface.
Word got to me with the news about my friend Harry. Jack had already called Harry’s wife Linda in Dallas, now on her way to Mexico. I called her to say I would pick her and her daughter up in Cancún.
It was Labor Day weekend, 2002, which means nothing in Mexico except the US consulate is closed. Repeated calls to the consulate went to voice mail, as we tried to figure out how to get Harry home.
Once on the ground, Linda wanted to see Harry.
This was before refrigeration was something you could count on, and Gary and I were worried about what she’d find. To say it was a funeral parlor would be a gross overstatement. The place they’d taken him was a cinder block building with a roll-up garage door in Playa del Carmen. Three new caskets stacked on the right. A desk. We walked around back to a room, and there was Harry. A bit bloated. A bit blue. He was closer to room temperature than cold. Better than we anticipated. They asked if we’d brought clothes to dress him. We said no, he could just be put into a body bag. Harry would be dressed by a mortician in the US for a double funeral.
Harry’s father, Harry Senior, had died the very next day after Harry (jr.) died, without ever knowing his son was gone. The two Harrys, father and son, were going to have one funeral in Dallas. Harry would get dressed there alongside his father.
Before we left the woman at the desk banged Linda’s Mastercard for $6000 USD on the spot for mortuary services, like a casket, paperwork and taking care of the body.
Now it was off to the Ministerio Público, which by some odd miracle was open on a Sunday afternoon. It was with a sigh of relief Linda signed a stack of paperwork, and received a bag with Harry’s Rolex, gold chain and his wedding band. His jewelry was not stolen.
That night though drained, we went to dinner at Papaya Republic. We told Harry stories. We ordered a Sambuca in his honor, coffee beans and all. It wasn’t solemn. It was awkward. The US holiday weekend had us in a holding pattern trying to coordinate documents and arrangements. Linda scheduled her return flight, and Harry was to be checked into cargo. With the paperwork from Playa the airline waived the need for his passport.
Tuesday morning I picked up Linda and Harry’s stepdaughter at their hotel. The plan was to meet the funeral people with Harry at their place in Playa. Then follow the pickup truck north, parked in the street with a pine box in the bed with Harry’s name written in marker on the box, the feet marked, and the head marked, so you’d know which way he was lying I guess.
Playa was a much smaller city than it is today, and where there are hotels and resorts, there was nothing but jungle on either side. And it was where the entrance to Mayakoba stands today, where the truck with Harry’s body broke down on the highway.
Parking behind the crippled truck, flashers flashing I got out, and walked to find out what was happening as the driver and his passenger buried their head under the hood.
“Oye, ¿qué pasa?” I asked with the questioning head nod gesture.
¿Necesita agua? Pretending to be a Green Angel, the Ángeles Verdes roadside crew.
Mexico was loaded with logistical problems, and this was one more. The hood was up. They had no phone, so one of them got on the radio chatting back and forth to someone.
Linda and her daughter stayed in my car. Linda is Mexican, and Mexico was never going to catch her off guard. A truck dying on the highway with a body in the back did not rattle her. She laughed and said it was Harry, playing a joke on us. And the clock was running, because cargo doesn’t wait.
We were to limp up to Puerto Morelos where a second truck would be waiting for us. The two pickup trucks were like bookends, with their tailgates backed up to one another. But now the question was how to get Harry from one truck to the other. That is where the six of us stood shoulder to shoulder on each side of Harry. Harry’s widow, his step daughter, me and three guys slid our hands under the rough pine edges of the box to hoist Harry into the other truck.
Once at the airport, Linda checked Harry into cargo with only minutes to spare to check-in herself. I hugged her and apologized that we would not be at the funeral, and she asked me to go get his passport once the consulate opened. Then she flew home with him.
You would think this is the end of the story. Oh no, wait there’s more.
A couple days later I called Linda and told her I had Harry’s passport. I mentioned she must have been relieved once they landed in Dallas.
I asked if the hearse showed up at the airport, yes she confirmed. She said they’d waited a long time, like hours, at the baggage carousel. Some people never got their bags at all. Harry had leaked all over the cargo hold. He wasn’t embalmed right, and he’d leaked. The plane sat on the tarmac for days while “hazmat” (hazardous materials experts) cleaned it out.
And when the funeral home in Dallas opened the pine box with Harry in it, they found what a border and a body bag and hot weather will do. Somebody in Playa put a big ole Texan’s body into a used, small, Mayan-sized coffin. The funeral director had to come at the casket with a crowbar to get Harry out.
There was a funeral. Harry’s father in an open casket. Harry in a closed one.
You cannot make this up. I’ve told it a hundred times and I love it more each time. For Harry and for Linda both.
He died in a cave, on the line, on his way out. Doing what he loved, and I get to say that because it’s true.
The last time I saw him, there were three coffee beans in the bottom of a glass.
Tragic, weirdly funny, at times gross, but always beautifully told.
Anís con tres moscas is what we'd order in Mexico DF at the time. This is the best story I've read on Substack. You have to live these things to tell the stories, and then the touch to convey them well. Really enjoyed the narrative, thanks Kay.