Have you ever imagined what your final resting place would look like? For some, a simple pine wood box with an understated headstone is perfect.
And for others, nothing but the best will do, and that better be big, expensive, and scream importance.
Personally, I haven’t given it much thought beyond a preference between burial and cremation.
But for one grandmother, her final resting place needed to be a place of smashing expectations and challenging ideas of humor, love, and the point of real living.
That’s why her final wish was to have a headstone with a massive c**k and balls built on top.
Yup. A massive penis headstone. You read that right, and it’s the most baller thing you’ve ever seen.
Vice News recently shared a jaw-dropping story about 99-year-old Catarina Orduña Pérez, affectionately known as Doña Cata, from the eastern Mexican state of Veracruz, who apparently loved peen.
Her family granted her final wish by having a five-and-a-half-foot tall sculpture of a penis and scrotum weighing in at an impressive 600 pounds placed on top of her grave.
“She wanted to break the paradigm of everything Mexican, where things are sometimes hidden because of not having an open mind,” Pérez’s grandson Álvaro Mota Limón told VICE. “
She was always very avant-garde, very forward-thinking about things.”
“She always said, in the Mexican sense, that we were vergas.”
I wrote a story for @VICE about 99-year-old Doña Cata's dying wish and how she embodied big verga energy. #BVE@VICENews @VICEWorldNews https://t.co/DHQ3R6AAIg
— Nathaniel Janowitz (@ngjanowitz) July 28, 2022
Limón explained to Vice that his beloved grandmother had a cheeky way of flipping a popular Mexican slang word, “vergas” on its head.
The slang word is rather profane and can be described in many ways, including a colorful way to tell someone to go f**k themselves.
But this versatile word can also mean something to be proud of, like badass or cool. And for Doña Cata, it meant something more powerful.
“She always said, in the Mexican sense, that we were vergas,” Limón told Vice. For her, the word was more about “integrity, courage, passion, and at the same time, love and joy.”
Doña Cata, grew up in poverty and never attended school, but that didn’t stop her from living a full life and positively impacting everyone around her.
Limón shared with Vice that even politicians would make it a point to stop in their small town to chat with her since she held sway and influence over her friends and neighbors.
She “saw life with great optimism and that problems shouldn’t overwhelm us.” Limón told Vice, adding that that’s verga is all about. “One should not give up. When problems arose, you needed to face them head-on,” he said.
The family and townspeople held a public ceremony to reveal the massive penis on her grave, which was shared on Twitter.
So far, the town has embraced her final wish, however unorthodox it may be.
Vice reports that for every 10 people, 7 love the final sculpture, and the remaining may be a bit too prudish to see the value and meaning but have been respectful of Doña Cata’s wishes. A
ll in all, the report reads, the town has really embraced this unique gravestone.
Here's the moment that Doña Cata's 600 pound cock and balls statue was unveiled on her grave. #BVE pic.twitter.com/glP1ZK1QYY
— Nathaniel Janowitz (@ngjanowitz) July 28, 2022
Sure, this seems like a super wild way to honor a loved one; after all, what will people remember of her 100 years from now?
And maybe that’s the entire point.
There is a natural and rational urge to leave a piece of us behind, to let others know our mark on this life and time.
And for Doña Cata, living a full, bold life despite hardship doesn’t mean one should sacrifice humor and love.
May Doña Cata’s memory be for a blessing. And may we all have just a little more levity and love in our daily grind.