BARCELONETA, Puerto Rico, Jan. 26 (UPI) --
A 31-year-old Puerto Rican poker fan who died recently was treated to
his hobby one last time when his body was seated at a card table during
his wake.
The family of Henry Rosario Martinez, 31, contacted the
Eternal Light Funeral Home in Barceloneta after his Jan. 19 death and
asked that the man's remains be embalmed, dressed and seated at a poker
table during his wake.
"It's the first time we did this here, but we take it as something
normal, because they have done these things in other parts of the
island," funeral home owner Jose Mendelez told EFE.
Martinez's wake included poker games with the corpse seated at the
table and friends and family posing for pictures with the deceased.
"I want him to be remembered as a happy person because he was always like that," mother Sonia Martinez told Primera Hora.
Wakes featuring the remains of deceased arranged in lifelike poses
are becoming increasingly common in Puerto Rico, with recent examples
including a paramedic posed in the back of an ambulance and a man posed
at a table playing dominoes.
Reminds me of a story from back in Chicago in 1984. When the son of a prominent south side drug kingpin was murdered, his father, "Flukey" Stokes arranged to have him propped up in the casket and then had the casket decked out to look like a Cadillac. I won't put a link here, but just google images for "Willie the Wimp". Somebody wrote a song about it that Stevie Ray Vaughn did a cut of a few years later. The song, actually, is a pretty spot on description of the coffin. Bizarre.
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