Resurrection and Immigration

In 1997, my brother overdosed on a speedball and died. At five in the
morning, on a lawn in Oxnard, he blued with the dawn and died. At five
in the morning, or shortly thereafter, a Mexican laborer, a gardener,
or rather a "lawn guy", found him, called for help. Help arrived; EMTs arrived in their ambulance at dawn and resuscitated my brother. My brother was dead and then he was alive. Again.

That my brother was found on the lawn by a Mexican laborer, by a gardener, at five in the morning...I don't know, I feel riddled with suspicion. I don't understand what that gardener was doing at that lawn AT FIVE IN THE MORNING. It just doesn't make rational sense: in the stilldark hours, people are sleeping. What...are they sleeping through the blower,the #1 noisiest thing on the grounds-keeping circuit? Or did this gardener use clipping shears in the dark so as not to wake the sleeping family whose house he tended on the cheap? What kind of house was it?


On the other hand, perhaps it was the laborer's own house, and perhaps he found my brother as he left for work that day, on his way to the tonier areas in the hills of Central California's Ventura County: Westlake Village, Agora Hills, Newbery Park.

A couple years ago, a mockumentary film came out called A Day Without A Mexican. The film highlights how Californians depend on these mostly illegal Mexican immigrants for their wellbeing and prosperity, their way of life. The film is classified as a comedic satire. Were the situation true, however, were these immigrants suddenly to disappear, Californians would be forced to face a deeply grim reality.

I shudder to think on it.