A Death in the Family

This past weekend was quite an emotional experience.  Only a week before, the patriarch of the family, Ceferino, 76, was completely healthy, waking up at 5 every morning and working until dusk.   Tuesday, I came across him when he was out working in the milpa (cornfield), and he told me he was feeling a little sick, and he thought he had the gripe (means the flu, but is used generally here to describe a host of illnesses).  Wednesday, he was feeling a bit better.  Thursday night, however, he was rushed to the hospital in San Marcos because he was having trouble breathing.  Friday morning, his daughter Lidia told me that the situation was grave, and that she and her siblings were heading down to the hospital to see him.  When they returned in the afternoon, they thought he was doing a bit better.  Saturday morning, I woke up to go running with Deysi and Mildred, but they didn’t show up.  Instead, I opted to get a long run in.  When I got back, I ran into the girls near the house and asked them why they hadn’t come.  They informed me that their grandpa had passed away during the night.

I walked up the little hill to the house to find a huge crowd of people in the courtyard, all crying.  I was wearing running shorts and a t-shirt, and was covered in sweat, so I quickly ducked into my house to pull myself together.  There were neighborhood women using my pila to wash clothes and blankets for the family, and other people were using my bathroom, so I didn’t feel comfortable bathing.  I toweled myself off, ate a 
bowl of cereal, and prepared myself to offer the family what consolation I could.

I stepped out of my house to find that the crowd of visitors had grown exponentially.  In Guatemalan culture, when someone dies, everyone who knows the family comes to the house to offer condolences, and the family feeds everyone that comes to the house for a few days following the death.  In the case of my family, this amounted to hundreds of visitors on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday (one of the members of the family estimated that between 700-1000 people visited during that time).  Every guest was offered coffee, bread, and a meal.  It was quite a production.

I won’t go into all the details of the funeral, because this post would turn into a novel of sorts, but I will say that, through all the sadness, something truly beautiful took place over the weekend.  I had the opportunity to spend time with my host family during a very trying time, and as a result, I became closer with them than I would have ever thought possible.  They insisted that I eat every meal with them, and they invited me into the various rooms of their house to pass the time.  During this time, I had a bunch of opportunities to talk to them about myself and my culture.  They asked me what funerals are like in the United States, and I explained that it depends on the religion of the deceased.  Then they asked me about my religion, which is a subject that I’ve been a little nervous to broach with them, since I’m neither Catholic nor Evangelical, which are pretty much the only two options around here (when someone asks you, they don’t ask “what religion are you?”, they ask “are you Catholic or Evangelical?”).  I decided to take the opportunity to explain that I’m Jewish, and then explain a little bit about Jewish culture.  They were both understanding and accepting of my differences.

After the burial on Sunday, I returned to the house with the family, and one of the daughters of Ceferino, Imelda (mother of Deysi and Josue), invited me into her family’s room to watch to Spain v. Brazil soccer game.  We all sat on the two beds, and all of them fell asleep within minutes.  I quietly took my leave, exhausted from a very intense weekend, but content with the relationship I now had with my host family.

Sorry there aren’t any pictures to accompany this post… There was not an appropriate time to pull out my camera during the weekend.