Jesus Melendez telling Frank Perez about poet Pedro Pietri’s final moments in an air ambulance.
Originally aired March 3, 2005 on NPR’s Morning Edition.
Transcript
Melendez: We took off and as were ascending, before we had leveled off, our level off point was 45 thousand feet so before we had leveled off Pedro began leaving us and uh the beauty about it is that I believe that there’s something after life, you could see it in Pedro. Pedro’s eyes were open when he was leaving and when he was leaving you see him like no longer paying attention to us although we were yelling and screaming and telling him to stay in this little plane, you know?
His eyes although open and looking at me, were focused somewhere else deep inside his head, that’s who he was paying attention to, that’s where he was going, he went somewhere, you could see it, and there was no pain, there’s a quiet dignity in that. And you know hey, you know I hated to see my friend go, I loved my friend very much, I miss him as all hell, but that, that shit was beautiful, that was profound.
I had no idea that Pedro and I becoming friends would one day lead to me holding his hand in his final moment and seeing him leave. Like my son said this is a day you cats had never planned for. And he was right. But it was beautiful it was a gift that he gave to me in his leaving, and although he was a profound poet, a great person, a great pain in the ass, his leaving like that just shows you that life is indeed a mystery and that this bullshit on earth is not all there is to life. That the spirit matter is what matters more than the human matter.