[Previous entry: "Don't Take Away Our Polluted New River!"] [Next entry: "Vietnam and Iraq: Two Kinds of Quagmires"]

08/31/2007: "Different Ways for the Dying"

Please Cry for Me, Cachanilla*

Death comes to us all, rich and poor, for better or worse, in sickness and in health. Psychologists say that it’s part of the human condition to react to the deaths of our loved ones through a similar cycle of emotions. We deny, we get angry, we grieve, and finally we accept that our own lives must go on without the ones we have lost.

This cycle of emotions must play out as the psychologists say, but still, over the centuries distinct cultures have marked death in unique and different ways. For us here along the border, the line on the map and the fence on the ground also mark a huge cultural difference and a pattern of behaviors to help us know how to deal with the events after a person dies.

Like any other cultural practice, all this is in flux; change comes to everything. When I was young, funerals were dark, forbidding scenes, with lugubrious words etched into the silence of a reserved congregation. The obscure, abstract melodies of medieval hymns set the mood of ponderous sorrow. No one breached the control of the priest or the minister in delivering his eulogy--in praise of the deceased, of course--but also as a warning to the living to follow the word of God or suffer forever thereafter.

As I grew into adulthood and middle age, the innovation that is endemic to our times also entered the funereal arts. Just as sweethearts began to design their own weddings, so also did those left behind take liberties with the traditions of funerals. The beloved’s favorite music might be played—even if it was happy, cheerful music. The congregation might be invited to share anecdotes about the departed. Most appreciated of their words were those that made the rest of us laugh. We could laugh at a funeral!

This new development came with the logic that after his long disease, the departed’s suffering was at long last over. Or if the recently passed had died unexpectedly in the full bloom of youth, we could still celebrate his or her new life with God in an eternal heaven. A funeral could be a happy occasion. Hallelujah, he is born once more in everlasting glory! Let us sing for joy and laugh at the good times we shared together!

A good friend’s wife hails from Mexicali . Upon experiencing this cultural variety of the marking of death, she was in turn shocked, bewildered, and horrified. “I couldn’t believe it,” she told me, her eyes wide. “People were laughing, laughing. That’s not right."

Several years ago, our neighbor’s housekeeper suffered a sudden tragedy when her son was killed in an auto accident in Mexicali . He had just graduated from medical school and was about to begin his practice. His young wife was pregnant with their first child. At the vigil, the disfigured son lay in an open casket as mourners milled about to be near him.

Having never met him, we and our neighbors paid our respects awkwardly, bowing before the flower-bedecked bier and touching his coffin like the others had done. It was a solemn occasion, of course, but one thing we had never experienced was the eerily ever-present strains of weeping. Sobs, cries, wails—they came in soft and shrill tones from all around the funeral parlor. Women old and young, all clutched in the arms of supportive friends, cried long and hard until I thought, tears surely must fail them and they would stop.

Above all the other assembled voices, one pierced the air—Mario’s wife. After my wife and I had retired to the side of the room, we saw Griselda throw herself upon her husband’s coffin weeping in full voice. Her face contorted in the agony of her grief.

Aside from the sad, many-voiced harmony of weeping, conversations continued at a low murmur. No one spoke above a bare whisper, and no one smiled. We were told that the vigil, and Griselda’s repeated flights into tearful sorrow, would last for many hours.

“You see,” said my friend’s Mexican wife, “in the U.S., it takes days, even weeks sometimes to plan the funeral so that everybody can arrive. In my country, if someone dies, we have the service the next day. There’s no time to control your emotions. At the funeral, everybody cries.”

The owner of a hospice in central California related that in her experience, Mexicans pass through the stages of the grieving process much faster than Americans. “Because we think we should hold things in,” she said, “it takes us longer to really process those deep emotions. Yes, we laugh at the funeral and party at the reception afterward, but in a way, we’re just putting off the sadness.”

After attending several U.S. funerals, my friend’s Mexican wife made a pact with her American husband. “When I die, bury me in Mexico . People are supposed to cry at my funeral.”

*The name given to people from Mexicali . Refers to the arrow weed that grows along the sides of fields and canals.