To Live and Die in L.A.

On Halloween, I become Mr. Scrooge. I don’t need a disguise, because I really am bah-humbug about the holiday. So on Sunday, before sunset, I locked my front gate against trick-or-treaters, turned off the lights downstairs, and went to my room to read about how people are so rootless in Southern California.

I live in a coastal condo with my son, who just turned 18. Our five-unit building is two years older than that, and we’re the only original owners left. The other four townhomes have turned over countless times, leaving only spectral recollections of former neighbors whose names now escape me.

Halloween just brings more nameless ghosts to my door from down the street and around the block. Sad to say, I would probably recognize the costume characters but not the kids underneath.

Dia de los Muertos, the holiday’s Mexican counterpart, makes matters worse for me since I have no relatives buried here. This feast calls for taking favorite foods and photos to the grave sites of departed loved ones whose souls are said to inhabit some accessible sixth dimension.

But both of my parents are buried in San Jose, where I grew up with seven siblings. They came from Mexico but didn’t raise us with the folkloric tradition of taking gifts to graveyards on All Souls Day.

My father, Dr. Agustin Gurza Villareal, died at 57 in 1976, two years after I moved to Los Angeles. He was strict with us but secretly sentimental. I saw him cry twice, that I can recall. Once when he got news that his mother had died in Torreon, his hometown in northern Mexico. And once when he heard a mariachi play a nostalgic Mexican song that’s an anthem for many immigrants.

Mexico lindo y querido, si muero lejos de ti/Que digan que estoy dormido, y que me traigan aqui. (“Mexico, lovely and beloved, if I die far from you, let them say I’m sleeping, and let them bring me here.”)

My father never actually made the request that resonated for him in song. In some ways, he was torn between two countries: He was an officer in the U.S. Air Force, but he never became a U.S. citizen. He achieved professional status here, but preferred barrio food in the flatlands to country-club lunches in the foothills closer to home.

And whenever he had occasion to come to Los Angeles, he’d always hook up with his fellow immigrant and old hometown friend, Paco Ruiz. Always first on the agenda was a stop at La Fonda, the Mexican restaurant on Wilshire, famous for its mariachi show. In those days, Dr. Gurza would say, you couldn’t find a good mariachi in San Jose.

Paco was the only close and lasting friend my father had in this country. They shared their memories of Mexico and ties to Torreon. They also knew the worry of raising large families in a new land where rock ‘n’ roll and modern mores undermined their old-fashioned notions of parental authority.

When I moved here to get my start, my father entrusted me to his friend Paquin, as he affectionately called him. Paco and his sweet wife, Olga, made room for me in their home in Whittier and treated me like a nephew.

Now, they’re gone too. Paco and Olga died quite unexpectedly this year, five months apart. They were both buried at Queen of Heaven Cemetery in Rowland Heights.

Paco’s oldest child and only son, Humberto, told me that he’s considered taking his father’s remains back to Mexico so he could be laid to rest next to his own father, who died without Paco being at his bedside. That way, they could finally be reunited, said Humberto, 60, a Vietnam combat veteran. In any case, when his time comes, Humberto will let his California-born son decide which side of the border to bury him on.

For immigrants, togetherness can be elusive in both life and death. At some point, folklore loses its hold on our assimilated souls. We relinquish the past forever by laying claim to new burial grounds.

Incredibly, the Ruiz family suffered yet another loss last month with the death of Paco and Olga’s daughter-in-law, Rafaela Cortez, mother of two teenage girls. We buried her at Queen of Heaven too.

As I entered the cemetery for the third time in seven months, I was struck by an odd, floating feeling of not belonging, of not being a part of this rootless place. It would be strange, even morbid, for my body to go back to Mexico for eternity. But am I going to be the only Gurza buried in The Big Nowhere, to borrow a title from an Ellroy novel?

If that’s the case, I’d much rather go like Carlos Castaneda, the mysterious Angeleno who gained fame in the 1960s with his books about the Yaqui mystic, Don Juan. One news account of his death last year said Castaneda was cremated, but his followers believe the author simply evanesced--”and he disappeared like mist from this world.”

Agustin Gurza’s column appears Tuesday and Saturday. Readers can reach Gurza at (714) 966-7712 or online at agustin.gurza@latimes.com