Buried the Next Day, Mourned for Nine Nights — Epoche B1
My great-aunt died on a Tuesday morning, and she was buried on Wednesday afternoon. I heard at midday, in another country, and I understood at once that I would not be there. Nobody crosses an ocean in a day. The wake began that same evening in her house. My cousin described it to me by telephone: chairs borrowed from three neighbours, coffee made and made again, the front door open, people arriving off the late bus and sitting until it was light. Then, in the afternoon, the cemetery. It seemed to me indecently quick. What I had not understood was that the burial is not the farewell. It is the first day of it. On the evening after the burial the novenario began — nine nights of prayers in her house, the same rosary at the same hour, the same women leading it. The crowd thins as the nights go on. On the ninth there is a gathering, food, and something is formally closed. Two jobs, done at two speeds. The body is dealt with quickly, which in that heat is a practical matter. The family is dealt with slowly: nine evenings when the house cannot be empty and nobody is left to sit alone with it. I had judged the speed and missed the length. It costs the ones who are abroad, and that cost is real. By the time the flight is arranged the burial is over, and often the ninth night too. You arrive to a house that has finished, and you grieve out of step with everyone in it. I used to think a funeral held within a day meant a family had no time. I had counted only the first day of a farewell that runs for nine more nights. References Norget, K. (2006). Days of Death, Days of Life: Ritual in the Popular Culture of Oaxaca. New York: Columbia University Press. Nutini, H. G. (1988). Todos Santos in Rural Tlaxcala: A Syncretic, Expressive, and Symbolic Analysis of the Cult of the Dead. Princeton: Princeton University Press.