This week has brought many challenges, from big to small. But one of the most striking events this week happened yesterday, on Thursday. A young Guatemalan woman who works at the clinic has been absent for the past week, having her first baby, at the age of 18. We were all excited to hear the news, as when she approached her due date we all half-expected her not to show up anymore, thinking maybe that was the day she'd gone into labor! Her sisters and mom brought the baby into the clinic to be checked out when he was just 1 day old. The doc examined him and gave the report that all was well. The grandmother was full of smiles, and so proud of the little guy that when I missed my chance to hold him, she ran outside to grab them for me. I held the little guy, wrapped in a bundle of a half dozen blankets.
Somehow things changed in the next 48 hours, because on Thursday morning (yesterday) the young mom woke up and the baby had died, at just 3 days old, and with no warning. The news traveled fast, and within a couple of hours, when the clinic was scheduled to open, everyone knew. The whole day at the clinic was affected by it, from our speculations to the cause of the baby's death to the fact that the woman who cleans and opens the clinic every day is the grandmother of this baby, and therefore was not there. We all asked what we could to to help, and it seemed that the only request was money--for the burial, and whatever other expenses were necessary. At the end of the day, we were all invited to the burial at the city cemetery.
There were few questions asked about the cause of the baby's death among the non-medical community, or at least that we heard. There was no discussion of an autopsy, and I heard no one try to place blame on anyone. Of course we all wondered was it some sort of hemorrhage, was it a cardiac problem, was it SIDS? But the overwhelming emotion everywhere was sadness.
The burial was intense. We waited outside in the cold for the procession of people down from the rural area (one of the communities where we did mobile clinics). 4 pick-ups trucks packed full of people passed by, and the 50 of us who were waiting on the steps stumbled over to join. The first truck carried the baby-sized coffin. From what I could see from the short distance, it was a white, ruffly, padded box, rectangular. It looked more like an ornate accessory than a coffin. It was propped on a stand made of metal rods. A group of men carried the coffin as pallbearers would, though it was small enough to be carried by just one.
As soon as they pulled into the cemetery one woman started to sob. Loudly. Like nothing I have ever heard before. It was pure anguish. There was no holding back. Occasionally she would shout out some term of endearment, or flail her arms and body toward the coffin, and her companions would hold her back. As she fell to the ground only a few yards into the cemetery, and stayed back for a while with two younger women, I learned that she had been drinking. When she rejoined the rest of the group, she continued with her sobs.
There was a fascinating contrast between the numerous children, the women selling candy and snacks at the burial, and the pure, honest grief in peoples' faces, posture, and sounds. About 25 of the 150 people present were wearing strips of white cloth--tied over babies on their backs, on their heads, as ties around their necks. These were to signify that they were family members. Most of the women were in indigenous dress, except for a few younger folks, and the 2 foreign women. Then men were mainly in jeans and a jacket, though a few were in suits, and almost half had cowboy hats. I heard that white was the chosen color, because it was a baby who had died, not an adult. White is the color of angels, which is what he was said to have been--a little angel called back to God.
There was little order to the process. As we walked to the far end of the cemetery (beyond the fancy monuments and such, to where space is given to people free of charge), we turned off to the right, then stopped while some men discussed the location, and we all turned around and walked to the left. We stood in the narrow spaces between the graves. There was a space already dug in the ground when we arrived. I'm not sure who dug it and when. A man in street clothes and dark sunglasses held his hat in his hands, and said a few religious words, and the entire crowd--minus the 4 foreigners there--crossed themselves. The speech focused on the idea of a little angel being returned to God.
After a moment, the coffin was lowered carefully into the ground, and the sobs became louder. The coffin wasn't just set into the earth, with a ceremonial placement of a shovel-full of dirt. The coffin was actually buried. Shovel-after-shovel-full, the crowd watched as two men took turns shoveling. They only stopped when there was a mound of dirt over the grave, and they had dug holes for four cut-off soda bottles to hold the white calla lilies they had brought. The grave was adorned in white flowers, and tiny plastic cups of soda were distributed to the crowd. Some of the women bought snacks for their kids, from the vendors who followed us to the grave sites.
Two of the women had almost identical cries in the crowd. The other woman was the grandmother. These women were in the throes of grief, they weren't burying it deep inside. Neither were the men who freely letting tears pour down their faces. Psychologists say that people have to experience grief, or the pent-up emption will cause some sort of explosion or harm later on. But many people struggle with how they should grieve, in a culture where displays of extreme emotions are not considered acceptable, especially in public. These women have a skill that is not often found, at least not back home. There were no negative repercussions for their sobs. I would imagine there may have been a quiet whisper about the woman drinking so much, but I heard none, and saw no disapproval.
The baby's mother did not attend the burial, because she was unwell, her face swollen, likely from so much crying, but possibly more. This is a place where temperature plays a significant role in health, and the family thought it would be harmful for her to be out in the cold, so she stayed home. She missed her own son's burial, but the baby's father shed some tears for her, standing right over the grave.
At the end of the burial, a group of us 3 foreigners walked away together. I thought we wouldn't say a word, because we were all so deep in our heads about what we had just witnessed. But it took surprisingly little time to cross over into conversation--sharing the observations, and questions that we had. It was surreal for me to imagine that within the span of 24 hours the mother probably spent 10 hours comforting and feeding a crying child, put him to sleep, woke up a couple of hours to find him dead, call her family, call the clinic, get arrangements made, hold a funeral and a burial, and have him in the ground 12 hours from the time she had woken up thinking he was ready to feed again. And after all that, after the day she had, and all of her family, we were going to go home to the comfort of our homes where no sobs were being let out, and have a peaceful evening.
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