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.
