The morning you died, the Texas sky was the color of fresh cream and the pecan tree behind the restaurant was just starting to drop its first leaves of autumn.
You were ninety-one, not eighty-five. You always lied about your age the way old men do, shaving off a few years like it still mattered.
You'd spent the day the way you spent most days now: sitting on the wide porch of the house your grandchildren called "Pop's Palace," letting the smallest ones climb you like a jungle gym while you pretended to grumble. Your hands were gnarled, your back bent, but your laugh lines had finally won the war against every scar life ever gave you.
You told them the same stories they'd heard a thousand times (about the night you and Mama Rosa jumped a train with nothing but two backpacks and a promise). They never got tired of hearing it. Neither did you.
When the sun started to sink, you felt it: a gentle tug behind the ribs, like someone you loved was calling you home from across the yard. You kissed each grandbaby on the forehead, told your daughter "Take care of the books, they're trickier than the brisket," and your son "Don't ever change Mama Rosa's red salsa recipe, even if the food bloggers beg."
Then you sat back in your rocker, closed your eyes, and let the breeze carry you the rest of the way.
They found you like that: smiling, hands folded peaceful in your lap, the sunset painting you gold.
The funeral was exactly what you wanted: standing room only at the little Baptist church you never attended but that loved you anyway. Every seat filled with people wearing the same sunflower-yellow shirts the staff still wear at Allen Family Kitchen. The preacher had to pause three times because folks kept crying too loud to hear him.
Your children (both colonels now, ramrod straight in dress uniforms) carried your casket themselves. Your grandchildren (twelve of them, plus seven great-grands) walked behind, each carrying a single pecan from the tree that shades your mother's grave.
They buried you right beside your wife, in the spot you picked out thirty years ago. The headstone was already waiting, engraved years back on a drunken, happy dare after too much wedding-anniversary tequila:
Cody-Ray Allen
Beloved husband, father, grandfather
He kept his promises.
Underneath, smaller, in your own shaky handwriting from when arthritis hadn't won yet:
I jumped a train with my mama rosa
and never looked back.
See y'all on the other side.
Save me some brisket.
After the graveside service, everyone went back to the original restaurant (the one you started in). They kept the doors open all night. The kitchens fired nonstop: brisket, barbacoa, tamales, your mother's cinnamon coffee flowing like a river.
People told stories until dawn. Someone hung a new sign out front, hand-painted and permanent this time:
Closed today
Because Pop finally went home to Mama Rosa
Back tomorrow.
He'd hate for you to go hungry.
Years later, when your youngest granddaughter (the one with your eyes and your wife's stubborn chin) took over the restaurants, she added one small thing to every location.
On the wall by the door, right at eye level, a simple brass plaque:
In memory of Cody-Ray & Mama Rosa
Who taught us that family isn't where you're born.
It's the place you run to
when the world gets too heavy to carry alone.
And under the pecan tree on the hill, if you visit on a quiet evening, sometimes the wind sounds almost like laughter: old, young, male, female, all mixed together.
Like a man and his mother, riding that freight train one more time, boxcar door wide open, sunflower-yellow sky ahead, nothing but possibility stretched out forever.
They're still going.
And they're still smiling.