Mexican culture: Death and Burial

 

About a year ago, this long lanky fellow came to my gate seeking translation help.  I knew him from the retired folks weekly club meeting.  Jose Miguel had a letter in his hand. It was in English from the Social Security administration.   A few days ago I went to his home because I heard he was sick and not eating.

I found him in bed, very weak.  I gave him a warm hug. I hadn’t seen him in many months and we had grown fond of each other during the project of communicating with the US Social Security Administration.

He had invited me to his home once before, but only to show me his vegetable garden. My own garden needed some help, and so he gave me some pointers.  I did not observe an actual home in the walled compound.  I did not know where he slept.

Last Sunday when I was in town to try to buy a ‘weed whacker’, I met another American Mexican.  Joe spoke perfect English, but did not look old enough to retire on a social security pension.  Apparently he had been here about three years ago.  During that time, he met and impregnated a local woman, with what was for her a change-of-life baby.  Before coming to Canatlan this year he spent three years in Guadalajara. Now he is here, looking for a place to rent or buy for his new family.  He has been here a month.  He is currently staying with Jose Miguel.

That Sunday in Canatlan we spoke about my home, and I extended an open invitation to come visit it and check it out.  Maybe at very least he’d like to house sit for me, giving me a chance to visit my friend in Oaxaca without worrying about my garden or my possessions?  We all know that if you leave a house empty, it is fair game for others to forage there.

Monday Joe came to my door. He told me that Jose Miguel was weak and not doing well, and would I come and take a look.  We got in my car and drove the mile to Jose’s compound.  I parked my car at his door on a path that looked more like a horse trail than a road.  It is very narrow, and my car was fully blocking passage.

Passed the threshold we entered the covered space (the foyer?) where a goat was tied and walked into an open space where chickens and cats ran loose,. Across the open space the narrow archway in front of us led to the garden.  We instead turned to the left, and found an actual door.  We walked into a tiny dark room, which led to another room equally tiny and dark.  In the second room there were two beds, one to the left and the other to the right under a window, and heaps of clothes at the foot. I saw no other furniture.  Once inside I looked back; the wall to the right of the doorway I saw a tiny wooden shelf, with a row of medicine bottles and boxes. Jose Miguel lay on the bed to the left, barely able to lift his head. 

I leant down and gave him a hug.  He held on to me for a long moment.  He held tightly to my hand as I sat on the edge of the bed.  After that warm hug, he told me of his recent medical adventures.  He had a prostate operation three months before.  In his mouth he had an infection on the lower gum, and on top a jagged fragment of a tooth.  Normally I saw him with a full mouth of teeth.  Without his dentures the right side of his mouth was toothless, and I could see both the jagged tooth fragment on top and the scabbed wound on the bottom.  For this, he had a bunch of pills, including an antibiotic.  None of this explained his current symptoms.  He showed me the results of his recent lab tests.  His white blood count was way up, his red cells few.  His blood pressure was on the low side.  He tapped his chest, saying sometimes he couldn’t catch his breath.  I understood that with such low blood pressure this might be the case, when he tried to walk.  It was also true that he was not eating much, I assumed it was because of the sore gum, which would also cause light-headedness and rapid pulse.  I listened, and gradually became aware that his hand was very hot.  His whole body was burning with fever.

My dogs had followed me into the courtyard, and were causing a ruckus with the chickens.  Jose got out of bed and went outside to restore order.  He went into the garden, followed by Joe, while I tried to get the dogs out of the compound.  Joe came back and said, “Come see what happened to Jose Miguel.”  I found him in the garden lying under a tree.  I extended an arm to get him up, but he said he needed a minute’s rest.  All of this was alarming to me, and so we bundled him up and got him to the doctor.  As it turns out, he is not using the hospital clinic, but rather a private doctor.  He came out of that office with another fistful of pills.  Prominent among them was ibuprofen.

Before returning home I bought a bunch of Ensure, since he obviously wasn’t eating enough.  I thought a clear beef broth might also be palliative, so I bought some beef and hoped his good friend Carmela, who lived across the path, would cook it for him.  We settled him back down in his bed, over the covers, and I went home to put into the blender the rest of a cooked vegetable medley I had in the fridge.  I brought him that and a spoon, and left.  He was burning up with fever.

The next day Joe came and said that, although Jose seemed a little more lively, he was still quite sick. At this point I am thinking Covid-19.  Jose finally admitted to having difficulty in breathing, and that combined with the high temperature that wasn’t coming down with NSAIDs, I felt a growing alarm and urgency to get him to the hospital clinic for a virus test.  That night, waiting for the test results, Joe stayed in my spare room. In hindsight, that was unnecessary since, if Jose Miguel did have the virus, Joe would already have been exposed.  That move proved problematic.

By now I had lost three working days, I had onion starters that needed to be planted, so I drove them into town and returned home.  They were at the hospital by 8 a.m., queued up to see a doctor.  I waited at home nervously, busying myself with baking a loaf of bread.

As this situation evolved, I came to learn that Jose Miguel’s sister had Covid!  The details of where she lives and has he had contact with her were just too difficult to come by.  Jose Miguel is a quiet man, and getting him to talk is a chore.  My usual hermit’s tranquility was thrown into a tornado, and at least until I knew the results of his Covid test I was not entertaining any other efforts to draw out the facts, the details.

I texted Joe at 9:45; any results?  He texted back that Jose was still with the doctor.  It was noon before I heard back again from Joe, and it was good news.  The Covid test came back negative.  I picked them up at the hospital in the late afternoon.  As we drove home, I asked Jose Miguel if he had the lab results.  “Tomorrow” is all he said. I wanted to read the results of all the medical tests he endured that day in the government clinic.  I am just plain curious why he had that particular set of symptoms.  Okay, I said we’d pick them up tomorrow.  He shook his head, raised his hand and with a smile he indicated it was not important.

Now Joe can move back in with Jose Miguel, although he seems rather devoid of nursing skills. Jose Miguel had been the cook, not Joe.  He paid no attention to the medicine schedule.  If Jose Miguel gave a polite negative reply to offer of food or water, Joe would drop it.  He is not solicitous.  On reflection, I might have felt better having Jose Miguel stay in my spare room, and let Joe have the other place to himself.  The weak man would have refused.

Joe did not move back in with Jose Miguel.  He claimed he could not sleep.  His bed was against the wall under the screened window, and he claimed that he could not sleep for all the mosquitoes.  He showed me his arms, which had a lot of red spots.  I worried about Jose Miguel sleeping alone.

The next day, after working hard in the yard and garden all morning, I wanted to relax in my recliner and watch a little tv.  Joe brought up a chair and sat beside me to also watch.  We each had called Jose Miguel’s phone a few times, but there was no answer. At one point of our TV viewing, Joe verbally wondered how Jose Miguel was. 

“Dead”, I replied.  I was annoyed that Joe was not concerned enough to physically go check on the sick man.  I thought he should not be left alone, but should have someone there with him.  And then there were all the animals, the goat, the chickens, and the litter of kittens.  Joe said there were close family ties, that his father and Jose Miguel had been very close friends from birth.  Jose Miguel knew who Joe was.  Jose Miguel had spent time working in the States.  Perhaps it was then that the friendship with Joe’s family was strong.  Joe called upon this connection to find housing when he returned recently to El Pozole.  As it turned out, housing during this time of pandemic is very hard to find.  Although Joe did not like the cramped primitive lifestyle, he was grateful to have a roof over his head.  After taking advantage of Jose Miguel’s hospitality, never considering how he was upending the hermit-like life of the older man, I thought Joe would feel obligated, if not bound by affection, to care for the sick old man.

When, in the end I discovered the true alcoholic nature of Joe, I understood better.  I know well the characteristics of that diseased personality type.  Now he sleeps under my roof.  I felt there was a viper in my midst.

As we watched TV that afternoon a neighbor called me and asked if I knew Jose Miguel was sick.  I told him about our visits to the doctors.  A couple of hours later he called me back, with the news that Jose Miguel was dead.

I had been prophetic.  Coincidentally I spoke the word at about the same time in the afternoon, 2 p.m. that Jose Miguel died.

Joe was finally mobilized.  He took my car and went to Jose Miguel’s rooms.  He returned after dark.  I drew information out of him, and realized that the body was already in a coffin and being waked in a room in El Pozole.  By now it was around 10 p.m.  I got up and grabbed the car keys.  Joe was surprised, I guess he was planning on going to sleep after the movie ended.  Calculating the situation with his own addict’s logic, he decided to come with me.

Marta’s house was just up the road, maybe 50 yards.  She had been waked in a room of that house.  I think that is the norm here.  But Jose Miguel’s residence was totally inadequate for the purpose, and so this room was cleaned up and outfitted for a wake.  It is on the corner, the place I think of as the center of downtown, like the intersection of Main Street and First Avenue.  It is unpaved, the narrow sidewalks are high against occasional flooding.  Down the road is the primary school house.  There are two ‘abarrotes’, little convenience stores, on that street.  One of the four corners is an empty shop whose entrance is covered and pillared, a rare pool of shade or respite from rain.

I took a seat on a curb alongside a few guys.  One was the neighbor, Armando, who had called me with the sad news.  We talked about what a good-hearted guy Jose Miguel was. We talked about other recent deaths.  The dryness of this rainy season, and the results on field and herd, also came up.

Finally I went inside to view the coffin.  The room was brightly lit, with cleanly swept tile flooring and folding chairs lined up at the wall.  A couple of hours earlier Joe had been there helping to prepare the room.  He followed me in, and he stood over the coffin crying with jerking sobs.  Given his recent slack attitude towards the ill man, I wondered if the tears were genuine or contrived.  I may never know.

I saw the familiar ladies there. I wondered when the rosary would be said.  Sitting in the doorway on alert with a paper in her hand, was Gloria, our town mayor.   In passing I touched her shoulder, but she did not look up to greet me.  She was busy passing information to another woman.  I hadn’t seen her in many months, and would have liked to exchange greetings with her.  I am still an outsider here, still learning the customs.  One very unfamiliar custom was the interment.  In observing Marta’s a couple of weeks earlier, I realized how very alien it was to what I was used to. This time around, in a couple of days, I would know what to expect of the basics. 

A full day of wake was followed by the funeral.  Marta’s had been at 4 p.m., so that the hard work at the cemetery would be done in waning heat.  At the last minute I learned that Jose’s would be at 11 a.m.  I was already in the middle of a project, and knew I could not clean up and arrive in time.  Around noon I drove out to the cemetery.

Near the entrance there is a prayer room.  The four walls are lined with chairs.  The coffin is set in the center of the rectangular room, and there is adequate room for standing.  Prayers are said, I do not know how standardized the activities are in this room.  The body lays there until the grave is prepared. 

I found a seat next to the man who had been pointed out to me to be Jose Miguel’s much younger brother.  We all were wearing masks, so I could not see his full face.  He brought his wife with him from their home in the tri-cities of Washington State. 

This is a common occurrence in El Pozole, where the deceased has relatives coming down from the States.  Imagine, these people have been gone for many years.  Some make summer visits, but many do not.  They have been missed, and now their extended families want to spend time with them.  I asked Manuel if he had a return ticket.  He did, and his departure was scheduled for the next day.  He was apologetic, knowing that he would leave many disappointed kin behind.  He has obligations at home, and could not afford to stay longer.  This was true of Marta’s two younger sons.  It is a rare blessing that her oldest son, Rudy, was granted a full month off by his boss.  He is walled up in his mother and grandmother’s home, cleaning and emptying the house, while he processes his grief.  He has to keep the front door locked and use earbuds, so relatives will not come banging on the door wanting to spend time with him. He carefully divides his time among the relatives, on his own terms.

The next question I asked Manual was one that had been simmering in my brain.  Did Jose Miguel have cancer?  This would explain so much.  Manual shared that his brother had lung cancer.  The older man had been a heavy smoker throughout his life. 

We had a long conversation.  It was a pleasant way to pass the time while the grave workers did their jobs.  I learned that their sister with Covid lives in Jose Gomez, hour away.  I noticed his wife watching us over his shoulder.  She seemed a small frail figure.  The veil that covered her head and draped her shoulders was of a neutral color, lending to the general effect of a dusty faded woman from another time.  Her wide fixed eyes gave the impression that she was looking at something curious, unable to comprehend.  Did she speak English?  Seems an odd question, since they live in the States, but she never opened her mouth.

Eventually I said goodbye and moved over to the grave site. The local customs make one wonder if the whole country is filled with robbers and thieves, corrupt to the core, this fact baked into the mindset of the entire culture.

The grave site was surrounded by a wrought iron picket fence.  There were a few other grave sites there, limiting the space for the team of workers.  The gate had the wording ‘El Pozole’ in wrought iron letters on the top.  I saw no family designation.  This small town cemetery shelters the deceased of many social and economic classes.  Some, like Marta’s, is covered on top with marble, or tiles, and headstones, maybe a crucifix, urns for flowers.  Marta’s still does not have her name; I mean to talk with Rudy about that.  Others are just mounds of dirt with a scrawny cross at the head of wood or metal, with old plastic flowers woven into them or buried.  There are so many graves with no markers.  The mounds of dirt are so close together that mourners tend to walk over them.  There is no master design, no neat pathways.

The hole had been dug, the concrete had been laid and set to create a thick-walled box awaiting the coffin.  This might have been done the day before; Joe told me he had been there helping with the dig.  Off to the side, a team carried bags of cement and pails of water.  The sound of the scraping shovel gave a background rhythm.

Eight men struggled with straps and footholds to lower the coffin, contending with mounds of dirt all around.  Once the coffin had been lowered into the box, some dirt and bits of wood to anchor it were lowered to place.  Whereas Marta’s coffin was the last, topmost, for that space, having her mother placed before her, Jose Miguel’s coffin would be the first and so the hole was very deep.  Maneuvering the coffin in place took time; the air was thick with voices, ‘a little to the left’, ‘careful now,’ ‘get your end over’, ‘come this way,’ each man precariously standing on the sloping mounds of dirt, those carrying the coffin in straps tripping and stumbling in the confined space.

Next, a number of pre-cut wood boards about three feet wide were set down on top of the thick concrete walls.  Buckets of cement conveyed across a human chain were poured over the boards. At last the mounds of dirt were put back.  I did not stay to see the finishing touches.  This will have to wait until I make a visit to his grave. 

And so I bid farewell to my dear Jose Miguel.  Now I understood why he would come to the tercera edad club meetings, which were so boring.  Our clubhouse is about 15 x 13 feet.  The early birds distribute the stack of plastic garden chairs.  He would come late and leave early, about an hour each time.  He would sit across from me, and his eyes would not leave my face.  Yet when I try to engage him in conversation, extend invitations to coffee or a meal at my place, he would not come.  He knew he was dying; why start a new relationship?  He didn’t have the strength to help me with the work on my farm.  These must have been his thoughts.  I would have been blessed to have even a short time with him, this gentle sweet soul.

 

 

Death by a thousand cuts

 

Death by a thousand cuts

These are strange times, for sure.  So many souls daily leaving bodies in states of sadness and separation from loved ones, as they lie in isolation.  When I think of it, I imagine an LA style traffic jam in the sky.  However, it is the departure of one soul in particular, not touched by Covid-19, that lies heavy on my heart.

I live in separation from all that pandemicamania.  I live a hermit’s life high in the Sierra Madres, outside a tiny village on a few acres of land, surrounded by pasture, farmland and orchards.  The town is five miles away, where we wear masks into the shops.  Some shops were closed initially, but have now opened.  The church holds fewer Masses and restrict numbers, but is open.  It is summer time, so it seems normal that schools are closed.  Kids are still roaming the streets in packs; some in masks, most not.

Ensconced in my hermitage tending my gardens, I listen to the news from far away.  Is this a mimic of Orson Welle’s fantasy catastrophe?  It is not real to me.  I can only imagine the terrible losses of loved ones.  I cannot imagine living six months out of work, without a paycheck.  I sympathize with the formerly enslaved class now demonstrating on the streets.  I have had my white privilege knocked out of me long ago, in my years of traveling around the world ‘on a shoestring’.  I know the difference between the entitled middle class family I was raised in, now alienated from, and the hand-to-mouth existence of so many people in the world who feel rich having family close.  I see our country as in another period of civil war.  There are those who are in harmony with our constitution, believing that all…are created equal, with certain inalienable rights, and there are those, sometimes described as the ‘white privileged’, who are ignorant of their ignorance.  I feel a rage inside me that these people will not wake up.  They feel a rage inside them at the suggestion that this country was built by other than white men, and should be shared equally.  The latter have no idea what it feels like to be arrested for walking the streets being black.

But I digress.  I would be crippled by sadness if, added on top of all the deaths I carry, I also remembered George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Stephon Clark, Philando Castille, Freddie Gray, …..

While working in China, already past retirement age, I was contacted by a friend of a friend and invited to join an expat community in Mexico.  I had always imagined myself retiring to Mexico, so my interest was easily piqued.  It was meant to be a combination meditation retreat and retirement community of 20 small lots, lined up facing a stupa; a Tibetan Buddhist tall statue meant to create positive spiritual energy that could ward off evil spirits.  There was meant to be a meditation hall at the entrance, where teachers would come to lead retreats, and whatever else the community wanted.

It was all the half-baked plan of a dreamer.  When the tale is told, it sounds like a scam but I choose to believe that the guy meant well, just had his head in the clouds.  A few houses got built, but the meditation hall never did.  As far as I could tell, that meeting hall was the focal point of the community.  Without it, there was no heart, no community.

I am a cockeyed optimist, so I sent my money ahead to get my retirement home started.  In those days the peso was very strong, so my dollars didn’t go so far.  When I arrived there were five structures on the land in various stages of completion.  One was already for sale.  One was utilitarian, holding the central water tank and a tiny tools storage and workshop.  One was mine, and I continued to put money into it to make a home out of the roofed shell that I encountered.

It has been over three years now that I live here alone.  I have struggled constantly to find competent workers to finish the house; one tiny project at a time.

It is a fascinating, if typical, village. In the 1600s a community of indigenous Tepehuanes had their homes and farms here.  Then the Spanish rule overshadowed the land, and through manipulation and treachery they were pushed out, and land grants were bestowed upon Spaniard families.  Poncho Villa once had a dwelling here, this being his native state of Durango, an hour by modern travel from his birthplace.

In the twentieth century, three families dominated the valley.  They are the Delgado’s, who had 17 children, and the Rodriguez’s, who had about the same number.  About six of these siblings intermarried.  There was also the Terrazas’.  I, on my acres, am surrounded by Terrazas land, and across the dirt road by Delgado farmland and orchards.

One brother, Beto, was introduced to me early on by the organizer of this failed community.  Beto was sympathetic to helping me out, to support this presumptive burgeoning project.  He has three grown sons who still live on the farm, located at the very edge of the village.  This family has been life savers in more than one emergency.  They have taught me much about how to live and farm in this climate and land.  While visiting them one day, I met another Delgado, who was helping them to apply for visas to make a visit to Texas.  Over time, this Delgado sister, Marta, would become a good friend of mine.  We found kindred spirits in each other.  I could speak to her in English, when my Spanish failed me. She was tied down by her elder care responsibilities, so she wasn’t free to hang out, except when I visited her there in the ancestral home at the center of the village.  She had raised her children in Chicago, put herself through college in the States, and became a teacher.  She worked there until she retired, with a social security pension.  Then she returned to her birth village to serve the family as the main caregiver to the matriarch of this clan, as this elderly woman slowly lost her independence through ill health and dementia.  She died this month, and so did Marta.

It reads like a Greek tragedy.  Marta was run down on the road by her vengeful sister-in-law and Milque Toast brother.  I had the sad fortune of finding her body on the road, and reporting it to the police.

The village is now split open, with years of repressed enmities spilling out their poisons on the land.  My peaceful, friendly if decrepit little village was gone.  For example, Beto nor his wife went to the wake or funeral.

Alone in my house, I sunk into immobility.  I was experiencing emotions unfamiliar to me.  I didn’t know how to cope.  I had no way to process what was happening.  I would go to the wake, at the family home, for an hour; say the rosary, and leave.  I met Marta’s three sons, and introduced myself to them.  They knew my name; Marta, when she visited Texas, would talk about me.  They were surrounded by family.  I could not expect them to help me process my pain when they had so much of their own.

The sight of Marta’s sprawled body was pegged to my eyelids.  Sleep was hard to come by, and troubled with dreams.  My garden awaited me which, in rainy season, was being overrun with weeds, not to mention crops that needed picking.  I couldn't find the energy to deal with it.  I sunk into my recliner and barely left it for days.  It hurt.  I hurt.  I needed to share this pain.  When I wrote to a cousin, I could see that I was acting as if no one in the world ever experienced the death of a loved one except me.

I took a step back.  I questioned everything about my current life.  Yes, I had experienced the passing of my parents, but both after an illness giving me time to adjust and anticipate.  This type and level of pain was very different.  In Marta’s death I felt cheated, deceived.  Now that her mother no longer needed her 24/7, she and I could spend more time together. I would have a companion.  But then she was taken from me, mid promise.

I thought wait, how could it be that I have never experienced the loss of a friend in my nearly 80 years of existence?  I journeyed down this road of despair. Slowly an awareness dawned. I could look down the long corridors of memory, as I left my home town and journeyed far and wide.  True, while living in the States I would meet people and make friends, but always feeling like an outsider.  No old school mates, no childhood friends, no one with whom I grew and shared the changes of life’s stages.

I spent many of my adult years abroad, however.  Perhaps most of them, if I could do the math.  What I experienced was that the intensity of such friendships among ex pats was abnormal.  I became addicted to this intense level of life sharing. It is in my makeup that I have a need for an abnormal depth of open hearted love and sharing.  My boundaries were faulty; they are barely rebuilt still. 

Now, in the solitary passing of my days, I think of friends.  In China, Lilly who took me north to her home village, where I helped her brother open a bakery.  In that week her family embraced me, and we spent evenings at the beer garden tearing apart shrimp, eating rice, flaming hot chile and other plates, laughing uproariously while sucking on liter-sized mugs of beer.

I could fill pages with other such memories.  In one Chinese town where I taught English, we ladies met weekly to play mahjong.  I loved those ladies, and waited impatiently each week for that Monday afternoon.

When I taught in East Tibet, the Kham region, I would drive on weekends over the mountain pass for four hours so I could visit with my old, old friend the temple’s head lama.  I think of him often, and long for conversations with him, but he is gone from my life, never to speak again, though he lives.

Angela, who spent her summer between semesters leading small backpacking groups up a remote mountain in the Himalayan range, with a team of nomads.  One nomad became her husband.  Her baby was born at home, as her best friends held her hand and took watch over the 33 hours of labor.  That little girl is as my grandchild now, but will I ever see her again in my life?  I long for them, as one longs for the departed.

Marta’s murder split me open; the poison of lost ones and loneliness spills out into my listless days and sleepless nights.  I fear my life will never be the same.  As the world experiences unfamiliar isolation, and awakening of consciousness; as our economy reels, splits apart and changes forever, I too cannot escape this epoch dynamic of change.

I am reminded of the sonnet I wrote, as I left my teenage years.

What is my future, may I see?

I want to know whom I will be

Ten years from now.  What will I know?

In what direction will I grow?

 

Will I within myself be great,

Or will I touch the life and fate

Of one who will in time know greatness?

 

Now why should I long for this crown,

This heavy capping of reknown?

I could not bear a weight so grand,

Considering my spine of sand.

 

You doubt the weakness of my back?

Look further, maybe brains Iack!

I am nothing, can’t you see?

This makes it clear, this poetry.

‘Tis nothing.

Well, indeed, my future has come and gone.  When I pass I will not be mourned as dear Marta is being mourned.  She left a huge hole in this community.  Not so I.  I am already forgotten by legions whom I once knew and loved, all around the world.  I hunch over the warm glow of their memories, warming my arthritic hands. How many more years?  Few, I hope. These are indeed strange times, holding challenges better met by younger, less scarred people.

Life update Feb 2020

Life update 3 years

The last three years in China was fun and educational.  In the end, the bakery was a money pit.  I arrived back to America broke.  Fortunately I had invested what was left of my failing savings in 2008 into a house in Florida.  Do you know about Reverse Culture Shock?  Have you experienced it? 

In that fog, (was it 2017?) I attempted to sell the house.  In the end I did manage to extract enough to serve me as a cushion, my medical emergency fund, a bulwark against my approaching old-age debilitations.

You may recall that I spent 2006 in India.  There I connected with a vague acquaintance from the time when I studied with the Tibetan lamas.  He introduced me to a retirement community designed to bring together Western students of the Buddha dharma in retirement, the focal point being a meditation hall.  I had sent considerable money to him in Mexico to secure me a lot and begin to build my house, which I designed.

He had told me that the shell was finished.  When I first saw it, the outer brick walls had been constructed, but where there should be a sliding door there was a gaping opening, through which a couple of horses and the occasional calf took refuge from the climate.  The floor was littered with fresh and aged poop etc.  Birds had nested, too.

A big chunk of that medical fund went into finishing off that house.  Far more than was prudent, given that the infrastructure was of such inferior material.  Curtains I made and put over the windows blew in the breeze.  This area is prone to wind storms, the gusts seem at least 80 mph.  It has knocked down my gas tank (breaking the valve which resulted in a cold fog as the gas rushed out in the middle of the night).  The cement roof has begun to cave in.  One day the rain inside the house was so intense, I left and went into the village to spend the day elsewhere.  There was no where I could sit or stand and not be dripped on.  Eventually we painted a waterproof coating on the roof, and installed a beam across the living room ceiling to forestall the cave-in.

I live on a hectare of land, between orchards, oat and corn fields, and pasture land. It is about 6,000 ft high in the Sierra Madres.  This valley is perhaps one mile wide.  The mountain ridges that enclose it are low, maybe 800 feet.  It runs mostly north/south, which makes for gorgeous and ever-changing sunrises and sunsets.  The Fall is rainy season, where the land is lush green and a morning mist shrouds it all in mystery.  The rest of the year is dry, prairie-like.  A trickle of a river meanders through it in a deep gorge where it passes through my land.

It is a beautiful and isolated place to live.  If only a community had grown here, it would idyllic (even though retired Tibetan Buddhists are eccentric people, not the mellowed out hippies you might wish to find here where weed grows freely).  Sadly, the community is a bust.  The meditation hall was never built. There is no spiritual community here.  Two kms away there is a tiny village occupied mostly by widows, very provincial people.  My home is too far for any of the ladies to walk to.  None drive.  The widowers ride bicycles, but none are inclined to risk the scandal of visiting me here unchaperoned. Since we are in this valley, a small dip of land, the cell phone reception in this small cluster of homes in the village is zero.  People walk in the street if they wish to use a phone.  This inhibits easy intercourse.  I can go weeks without talking to anyone.

I did purchase a wifi plan, using its own box and SIM card, to provide myself with internet at my home.  I get great reception, in this wide-open spot.

One house, immediately adjoining mine, is for sale.  For a mere $10,000 US you can own your own 10 meter wide brick house.  The brick walls are painted but not finished, the floor is not tiled.  It has a functioning kitchen and bathroom with gas water heater and well water.

There is another brick house, with a large floor layout, that is nothing more than a shell.  The fourth house structure is two stories, the roof room being the meditation room.  A Canadian guy paid for its construction and visits it twice a year.  He is a bachelor, a recluse, very awkward.  He doesn’t like to do outdoor work, is not handy at all with tools; not much support to the ongoing task of maintaining the land and infrastructure.  I have ongoing problems with the well and water distribution system. I am trying to tame the land; the ‘orchard’ has twelve surviving peach saplings, at last count.  All other trees I’ve planted have died, probably for lack of water.

I am a cat person, as you may recall.  One of the nearby farms had a lot of cats, before they got a dog.  I took one of those kittens, an unusual calico with gray instead of black as the third color.  She proved to be sterile (for a couple of years, anyway).  She cycled in and out of heat but produced nothing.

When I moved onto the land, there was a white dog living on the adjoining farm.  The farmer lives in town, which is about 15 minutes away.  She was like a Maltese, but very bedraggled.  She even had a bald spot on her neck, which turned out to be from scratching fleas.

This dog, which after procrastination I finally name ‘Chula’, attached herself to me.  I tried not to adopt her, but she tried harder and won.  I cleaned her up, she proved to be very pretty, and the folks in the village were quite surprised to see how she turned out.  I had her for two years, before she got separated from me in the city of Durango, in a Sam’s Club parking lot.  At first I felt relieved of the responsibility, but after a couple of months I started missing her a lot.  She had taken a one-month road trip with me November 2018, when I drove to Vermont to empty out my storage there.  She was a trooper.

Stray females would wander on to the property, lovely dogs each one, but large animals.  I turned them all away.  Then a villager handed me a tiny white bundle.  It would have been rude to turn her away.  Of course, she could not compare with nor replace Chula.  I named her Peanut.  She was a pup, a bit wild.  Not like the sedate Chula, who already had maturity and a couple of litters behind her when she came to me.

I felt ambiguous towards Peanut. Then she got pregnant, her first cycle.  Way too young for pups.  She turned out to be a terrible mother.  She didn’t like nursing her pups.  The milk dried up after four weeks, she barely had enough to feed them.  They could wander off in the house and get stuck somewhere, and scream, and she would sleep on.  She never learned to grab the scruff of the neck to move them out of danger.

When it came time to find her a sire, of the dogs that hung out here, I chose a black one that had a similar body but long legs and pointed ears.  The week that she was in heat was a lot of work, beating off the big dogs and isolating the two small ones to court.  He managed to impregnate her, and so began our nine-week wait.

The owner is employed as the farm manager to a large piece near mine.  He is a cool guy; I think he lives in Canatlan (the town 15 minutes from here).  I don’t know anything more about him.  He has a gentle smile and demeanor.   Before the pups were born he walked over to my place and said he would like one of the pups.  His dog, the sire, had died from dog-fight wounds.  We hoped for a black one to replace him.

The pups were finally born.  Three of them came, two boys and a girl, but no black one.  Two look like Boxer-colored  twins, and one white one.  The twins are boy/girl.  The white one was the biggest.  As they grew, it became obvious that the white one would have the long legs of the sire, the other two would be squat sausages like the mother.  At the moment, seven weeks along, the twins really do look like little sausages, but I’m sure as they get bigger they will develop a more normal physique.

Meanwhile, as they grow older, the white one is transforming into a heart breaker.  She is not white after all.  A feint shade about the color of champagne is emerging.  He is no Alpha male, he sleeps a lot, and is affectionate.  I thought that would be the dog Julian would choose to replace his, but now I doubt it.  I think that if he takes any of them, he will choose the Alpha male twin.  I hope it works out that way, because I am leaning towards getting rid of all of them except Champ, my champagne dog.

Remember that gray calico?  When Peanut was two weeks pregnant, don’t ask me how, the ‘sterile’ cat got pregnant.  So now I have her, five kittens, three pups, a dog and another stray cat. The non-resident neighbor farmer has a plow team that I also interact with.  A beautiful black horse, not trained for riding, and a skittish jackass.  I could write a long essay about our adventures, but I won’t here.

You write me about the men in your lives; for me, it’s the animals that share my love.

This life is not fulfilling; I need a small circle of friends for support.  On the other hand, if I follow the pattern of forebears, I should have about five more years of lucidity before the Alzheimer’s kicks in. I think to move to either Morelia or Oaxaca, each deeper south into the Mexican heartland.  But then what do I do with my investment here?  Who would buy this house!  People in Durango, an hour away, do come this way to look for a second, country home.  But none have stopped to inquire here at my door. To complicate things, the hectare is owned by a non-profit association.  I am trying to buy my piece of it, but that is complicated.  So I could have to walk away from my considerable investment.  My monthly pension is not enough to live in a city, I think, without the supplement of the proceeds from here.  If I am right about having only five more lucid years, do I really want yet one more stressful move and re-acclimation?

It is unfortunate that after my long and wandering life I have never acquired a friend to join me here as companion.  I think, one good buddy who drinks coffee and plays board games is all it would take. 

So, here I am.  If you ever get to traveling this way, you will find me here.