El entierro
The sun beat down on my hat, as I walked along wearing the skirt I have only pulled out twice since I’ve been here. All around me, people moved along silently, some in dress shirts and nice shoes, others in T-shirts, all scarcely talking, many looking at the ground.
The truck lumbered slowly forward, trying to ensure that all of the mourners were keeping pace over the three miles of rocky, dirt road, full of mud puddles from last night’s rain. People stepped around and over them, each foot in front of the other bringing us closer to the cemetery. All of the children were in the back of the truck, squatting around the plain light blue wooden box that held the body.
Before this morning, I reflected, I had never actually seen a dead body, never been to a burial, never been present at the time of someone’s death. But here I am, I thought, accompanying the 100 members of this small farming cooperative to the culmination of yesterday’s tragedy, to the today’s end point of what will be many days of pain and recovery.
The young man who died, I didn’t meet in my week in the community, but he was well known. 20 years old, Wilfredo came home drunk from the independence day festivities in San Ramón, and having found his girlfriend there with another guy, he took it upon himself to drink from a bag of pesticide. The first I heard of it was when Xiomara, the 15 year old daughter in the Blandino house, where I am living, came to ask me if I had anything to calm nerves, for the mother of the boy who “se envenenó” (poisoned himself). I didn’t.
Over the next two hours, he was rushed on foot (there are no cars in the community) to a clinic three miles away, and then returned. “Murió,” was Aura’s only response when we asked her what had happened to him, she being soaked from the rainy walk, from supporting his mother as they walked the three miles back, four of the community’s men carrying the body, as before they had carried the boy.
Now, we walked along in the funeral procession, towards one of the few cemeteries where one still doesn’t have to pay to bury someone. As we moved along the road more and more people joined the line, some thoughtful, some crying, some seemingly following the only out of the ordinary event on this Thursday afternoon. The casket was lowered into the ground with what could be mustered of ceremony, a few biblical verses, and shocked expressions all around, as I imagine exist at many funerals. All around looks of shock and surprise, resignation, hiding the fountains of pain that well up inside of one at such unbelievable and unsuspected tragedies. Standing there, I was struck by the rapidity of change, of death; no one there had thought to be at a burial 24 hours earlier.
I am reminded again and again that this experience is about much more than learning about coffee, or cooperatives, or even the countries where I am. I am learning a lot more about what it means to be human, to be compassionate, and interested, and present. To say I am sorry to a mother that has just lost her son, in a tight-knit community that I barely know.
The truck lumbered slowly forward, trying to ensure that all of the mourners were keeping pace over the three miles of rocky, dirt road, full of mud puddles from last night’s rain. People stepped around and over them, each foot in front of the other bringing us closer to the cemetery. All of the children were in the back of the truck, squatting around the plain light blue wooden box that held the body.
Before this morning, I reflected, I had never actually seen a dead body, never been to a burial, never been present at the time of someone’s death. But here I am, I thought, accompanying the 100 members of this small farming cooperative to the culmination of yesterday’s tragedy, to the today’s end point of what will be many days of pain and recovery.
The young man who died, I didn’t meet in my week in the community, but he was well known. 20 years old, Wilfredo came home drunk from the independence day festivities in San Ramón, and having found his girlfriend there with another guy, he took it upon himself to drink from a bag of pesticide. The first I heard of it was when Xiomara, the 15 year old daughter in the Blandino house, where I am living, came to ask me if I had anything to calm nerves, for the mother of the boy who “se envenenó” (poisoned himself). I didn’t.
Over the next two hours, he was rushed on foot (there are no cars in the community) to a clinic three miles away, and then returned. “Murió,” was Aura’s only response when we asked her what had happened to him, she being soaked from the rainy walk, from supporting his mother as they walked the three miles back, four of the community’s men carrying the body, as before they had carried the boy.
Now, we walked along in the funeral procession, towards one of the few cemeteries where one still doesn’t have to pay to bury someone. As we moved along the road more and more people joined the line, some thoughtful, some crying, some seemingly following the only out of the ordinary event on this Thursday afternoon. The casket was lowered into the ground with what could be mustered of ceremony, a few biblical verses, and shocked expressions all around, as I imagine exist at many funerals. All around looks of shock and surprise, resignation, hiding the fountains of pain that well up inside of one at such unbelievable and unsuspected tragedies. Standing there, I was struck by the rapidity of change, of death; no one there had thought to be at a burial 24 hours earlier.
I am reminded again and again that this experience is about much more than learning about coffee, or cooperatives, or even the countries where I am. I am learning a lot more about what it means to be human, to be compassionate, and interested, and present. To say I am sorry to a mother that has just lost her son, in a tight-knit community that I barely know.
posted by Hilary King at
8:32 PM
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