It wasn't such a bad afterlife at first.

With the first one, he didn't feel a thing. How could he?

.

"He's calmed down," the clerk murmured to someone outside the door. "You can come in."

Héctor picked his head up off the desk in the office of new arrivals, turning around as another skeleton walked in.

"Héctor, is that you?"

He looked the woman up and down. The sunburst flowers on her cheeks glared back, but something about her narrow chin and her forehead...

She wrung her hands in front of her dress. He looked at his own fingers and back at hers. "Héctor, I don't know if you—"

"Mamá?"

She nodded, covering her mouth with one hand.

"But you died when I was baby."

"I've wanted to see you ever since."

He stood up and took her hands. "I always wondered what you were like."

"We can finally get to know each other." She folded her arms around him in a hug that should have felt like bones but didn't. Héctor pressed his face against her shoulder and took in a scent that was almost memory.

She pulled back, knuckling a tear from her eye. "I'm just glad I got to see you at all."

"What do you mean, Mamá?"

The clerk cleared his throat. "Mr. Rivera, your mother's hometown was hit hard by the influenza a few years ago, and like yourself she died young. When that happens—"

"It's all right," Héctor's mother said to the clerk. "I'll tell him."

Héctor told his mother about his life, about Coco. She told him old family jokes. It was two years before that last old schoolmate forgot the funny story about a girl who'd brought a frog to class. Héctor came to visit his mother's place one day, and the neighbors said she was gone. .

.

Tell the one about our family,

It made me laugh so loud,

The one about the cactus tree,

The day I made you proud.

Your spirit like a memory,

A shining golden cloud.

-"Chistes," by Héctor Rivera