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.