Love, Novela [Completed]

Re: The funeral

From: novela-harmon@bethel.edu
Date: Mon, Nov 13, 2017 at 6:10 PM
Subject: The funeral
To: grace-k-nelson@bethel.edu

Alex took me with him to a funeral this weekend. It was for a former coworker, someone he knew but hadn't been that close to. He said he wanted me to see in person how Mexicans mourn a recently deceased person, particularly a sudden death. This person was killed in a car accident so it was completely unexpected, and he left a wife and three young children.

I've been to sad funerals before. The worst was probably the baby that died (I think I told you about it). But even in such extreme circumstances, I guess we ("we" meaning Americans/Midwesterners/Germanic-Scandinavian descendants) are pretty reserved.

There was wailing. I couldn't believe that even in such an unexpected circumstance, and even if it was recent, the wife or mother would wail. I'm not exaggerating, I'm talking wailing like a two-year-old that was told he can't get the toy and wants the entire store to know it. But we're not talking about two-year-olds here, we're talking about grown women with fully matured vocal chords exercising them to their fullest. For an awkward few minutes, I could imagine without trying too hard that the mother-in-law and the wife were engaging in a sort of morbid competition to demonstrate who loved him more.

Oh, and fainting. They each fainted at least once, usually after a bout of wailing. And even more surprising was that several people rushed forward each time, prepared with rubbing alcohol or smelling salts in hand to revive them. It reminded me for a horrible moment of a weird kind of circus or something.

The normal thing, depending on the wherewithal, level of urbanization, and type and level of religiosity (Alex kept emphasizing that all of these things make a difference, along with who died, whether it was expected etc.) is: they stay up all night. It is a basically a vigil; the word is either "Velación," or "Velorio" ("Velar" is "to watch," so it's a vigil as well as a wake). It also happens that "vela" means "candle," which is handy because a big thing is having enormous candles burning all night, one at each corner of the dead person's body. (So yes, in addition to "soap opera," my name means "she doesn't watch/she isn't watching.")

People pray off and on all night, chiefly the rosary. There is no priest; whoever knows the rosary the best is asked to lead it.

One specifically odd thing that seemed to tie it to Day of the Dead was that people would leave things in the coffin that the dead person was expected to take with them. The odd thing is that people seem to have no issue reconciling their purported Catholic faith with this decidedly un-Catholic act of belief.

But possibly the weirdest thing was the least apparent. Alex told me afterward that the guy's sister didn't come. She is pregnant, and some people believe that the deceased person won't want to "go alone" so they'll "take someone with them." Pregnant women especially encouraged to stay home. Also, anyone with an injury that could get infected, because the "mal aire" (bad air) of the dead person might do them harm. These kinds of things I wouldn't even find out about if not for Alex.

So this was a rather unexpected and atypically painful death, bringing out the extremes of mourning. Alex seemed to be aware of this , and thought that seeing it would help me contextualize the beliefs in death and the afterlife in a raw, unguarded moment. I suppose it did. But I NEVER want to go to another Mexican's funeral again.

Love, Novela