Where divergent religious customs merge…

Daniel Pérez González was a beautiful baby. That was the way his parents, Flor and Jorge, believed; my wife Arlene and I agreed. However, few can share our certainty, because we were among the few who saw him alive. Daniel was born in a hospital in Oaxaca (wa-HAW-kah), a city of about 400,000 inhabitants high in the Sierra Madre mountain range of southern Mexico. I welcomed him into the world along with Arlene, our daughter Sarah, then 13, and Daniel’s grandmother, Chona. From the womb, the nurse passed our newest member of the extended family into three eagerly loving sets of arms: Chona’s, her older sister Carmela’s (Sarah’s closest friend in Oaxaca), and then Sarah.

We have a long and colorful history together, my Jewish family in my previous hometown of Toronto and my devout Catholic family in Oaxaca. Chona is our comadre and matriarch of her family. Not six months earlier, she and her grandchildren had yelled Mazel Tov at Sarah’s Bat Mitzvah in Toronto. Over the years, we’ve raised many glasses of mezcal (Oaxacan’s version of tequila) on notable birthdays, including Quince Años (the party where a girl turns fifteen, with similarities to the Bat Mitzvah); we have eaten matzoh together for Passover in Toronto; and we have hosted together many Christmas, New Years and Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico.

But it was Daniel’s death that reinforced for me, through much laughter and much tears, the profound irrelevance of cultural differences to the universal rituals surrounding death.

On the day of his birth, it was easy to imagine that Daniel’s life would unfold like Sarah’s. Weighing in at 8 pounds and with a full head of black hair, the baby looked extremely healthy. Like my wife’s, Flor’s pregnancy had been full-term. Like Sara, Daniel was born by caesarean section; Like Sarah, his mother’s umbilical cord had wrapped around his neck, causing him temporary respiratory distress and the need to spend a few days in an incubator. But we don’t worry, his father and his cousin, both obstetricians with connections in the Oaxacan medical community. He would receive the best postnatal care available and one day we would dance at his wedding.
But then their ways parted. After two days of life, we mourn the death of little Daniel due to respiratory distress, next to his coffin in Chona’s room, with family, friends and compadres.

Between birth and death came a crazy quilt of unique experiences in Mexico that resonated with my memories of the grieving process my Canadian family went through when my father Sam died a few years earlier.

Most Oaxacans accept that death hits you at home, literally. Daniel left the hospital in an ornate, white satin-lined coffin, destined not for a funeral home, but for the living room of the family compound. Once he was seated at a table covered with clean tablecloths, with a large silver crucifix behind it, my compadre Javier and I were sent to the Mercado de Abastos (the largest peasant market in the state), to buy white gladioli and flower arrangements. . This was a far cry from the somber discussion about the formal arrangements at Toronto’s Steeles Memorial after my father’s death.

In this passionate and expressive country, even death rites are incomplete without the drama of screaming and accusations. At the cemetery I found out that Daniel was going to be buried in a low grave tomb on top of Tia Lolita (Aunt Lola), his great-great-aunt who had died in 1990, who was on top of another relative who had died in 1982. But when we met with the undertaker, the president, at lolita’s grave just hours after daniel’s death, we were informed that the annual dues had not been paid in ten years. Much shouting followed, but in the end, after a heated debate, the president managed to “extort”, as he was entitled to, thousands of pesos in back government taxes and administrative fees, plus about 1000 pesos in the likely event that Daniel would require a vault (literally, a vault, the reinforced concrete slabs with rebar designed to hold the occupants of the tomb in an orderly configuration). And we weren’t done yet. Only after Chona had produced enough historical documents to convince everyone that she had the authority to bury Daniel next to Lolita were the certificates and receipts issued.

Back at Chona’s house, the mourners had begun to arrive. A short time later, Jorge and I delivered 150 different cakes, which will be used to dip in the traditional hot chocolate that is served to those attending such gatherings. Then I experienced another deep emotion of déjà vu. The noticeably slower pace of Oaxaca’s morning society was gone. With an efficient office, Chona and his family transformed the house into a mourning chamber, arranging necessities like chair rentals and ordering attendees to the kitchen. There, under Chona’s roof, I time traveled to my mother’s kitchen, filled with friends and family I hadn’t seen in years, right after my father’s funeral. I could hear my mother’s friend Rayla arranging who would bring what meals to our house during shiva.

Then there were the inevitable tragicomic moments. When I delivered the eulogy for my father, I couldn’t resist telling a story about him that referenced a shared moment involving gas. In Mexico, the black humor of death is even more visceral. When Chona and I returned to the cemetery to make sure the burial preparations were underway, we found His Highness and his assistant half a foot below, on the top concrete slab of the vault, along with part of a human being. Chona was outraged and started yelling “that can’t be Aunt Lolita!”. We came up with many theories about the mysterious bone, all revolving around the amorous activities of the dead, none repeatable in this newspaper. That kept us going until we finally found Tía Lolita’s complete skull, still covered with the traditional fine cloth for the head to avoid mosquito bites. We finally came to the conclusion that a few years ago someone else had been buried next to Lola. Solved the mystery of the extra jaw. Here in southern Mexico, multiple burials can occur in the same grave, sometimes at different levels and sometimes with the removal of bones after several years of non-payment of fees. In any case, in exchange for a large tip, the presidente agreed to leave a place for Daniel’s cajita (little coffin, or literally, box) and hide Lolita’s head and any other remaining bones in a sack at one end of the the opening of the tomb. . The funeral would take place the next day, not unlike the dispatch with which Jews bury their dead, but very different from the traditional death custom of Oaxacan adults characterized by several days of prayer, visitation, and other rituals before of the burial, with a similar purpose. and function to the Jewish period of Shiva after the burial.

Later that night, back at the house, we listened to a cassette recording of nursery rhymes. Although in the Jewish tradition we are not allowed to play music during mourning, these melodies seemed appropriate. Arlene tenderly placed a small rattle next to Daniel, in accordance with local custom. A young woman led a 20 minute prayer, strikingly similar in nature to Kaddish in a Shiva home. Then she had more food — mole negro (chicken stew in a rich chili and chocolate sauce) with rolls, tortillas, and salsa — and more prayer. When the father was finally late, there was the obligatory humor about the clergy; someone joked that he had just turned up for a meal.

The next afternoon, we were putting up a bountiful display of flowers in the back of a pickup truck. Javier and I took the final pictures of the baby, and then Jorge placed his son in the back of a white 1980s pickup truck for his final trip.

The cemetery ritual combined the ongoing familiarity of my own Canadian experiences with Mexicana. A few gentle prayers, a few handfuls of dirt placed on top of the coffin, and incongruously our two friendly cemetery workers placed the concrete slab between the remaining parts of the vault lid, then mixed and applied cement to seal the vault. Reminiscent of Jewish custom, Chona asked Javier and me to help shovel the dirt, then invited everyone home for a big lunch.

There was no music in the house. Idle talk took its place. Eventually, once most of the people had left, leaving only the sterile white altar and slowly burning mourners’ candles, Arlene and I decided to go downtown for a walk, sad and emotionally drained but strangely comforting. After a funeral in Oaxaca for a Catholic baby, I felt exactly as I felt the first time I stepped outside after getting up from my father’s shiva.