“Feliz Cumpleaños” means Happy Birthday, but cumple means “you complete” + “years.” So the term is also used for death anniversaries or any anniversary, every time you complete a year… For example, on July 19 I told my host sister that it was my Grandmother’s “anniversary of her death” but I could have said “her cumpleaños.” Nevertheless, they understood. It also happened to be my site-mate Abby’s birthday. So it was two types of cumpleaños on one day, Feliz and not feliz. Both equally real.
It is a custom to say “Muchas Gracias” and to give the response “Buen Provecho” at the end of a meal. But when you run into someone eating or snacking on “refacción,” you also say “Provecho!” When anyone’s eating or when you leave work for lunchtime: “Provecho!”
Last week my host cousin Herlinda told my host sister, Clara, that their deceased cousin came to her in a dream. She told her that she was thirsty. “Tengo sed” ella dijo. She died 4 years ago, her cumpleaños in late May. My host family visited and left a candle burning and a filled coke bottle with agua pura. I bought a bottle of water for 1Q and called my host sister on my way to the cemetery. “Que hago yo con la botella de agua?” She told me “Pongalo cerca del panteón (tomb)” she told me. “Abre la tapadera o echar agua cerca del panteón” I said “vaya está bien.” I could hear my host mom advising Clara in K’iche’ over the phone speaker. And my host grandmother asked me when I got home: “Did you encounter the spirit?” “Sí, ‘Buelita, Sí” even though I’m not sure if I did.
I wanted to leave water for my would-be host sister/aunt Doña Rosario in case she did ‘have thirst.’ I never thought about the dead being thirsty before. And maybe I wanted to leave her water because I want to recognize the gap she left in my host house when she died. I know about gaps when someone goes, the weight of invisible, palpable grief that coats the spirit when someone you love transcends to some other sky, even if that sky is not the physical one we know; even if the loss is imaginary to passersby but it bears down on you like an anvil. And I guess since I’ve heard my host mom’s voice crack as she cries over her sister’s hardships, of her fragile frame before she died and her pallid expression, I feel like a knowing neighbor to their loss. And I know I’m sitting in her chair now, where she used to sit for dinner, always to the right of the stove. I can’t take her place even though I’ve taken her spot, but there’s a connection in things like places by the stove and setting your weight on the same, sturdy chair.
So all of this compelled a brief visit to the cemetery to leave a bottle of water with the top left open.
I didn’t pray but I thought about her, and I think I said: “I hope this helps.” But maybe I only thought it. There were other women at another grave site near by, visiting with each other.
This week is the one-year anniversary of my sitemate Abby’s would-be host dad’s death. He passed days after coming down with a pain in his leg, this was 4 months before Abby arrived. He left a wife and two children, all of whom are mystified at the least by his abrupt departure. Abby told me it has been a tearful week, naturally. I stopped by to eat with them today, as they provide a lunch on the anniversary of his death, the ‘cumpleaños.’ They served chicken, rice with tamalitos (tortillas boiled in leaves) and picante sauce with rosa de jamaica. As I entered the courtyard area of their house, I said “Provecho” to the friendly strangers I did not recognize: “Gracias” they responded, tamalitos in hand.
Women from the neighborhood come to prepare for the morning, that is the expectation of friends and neighbors, that they help prepare the food. The meals were prepared in GIANT tins that an adult could use as a bathtub, they were absolutely massive. I’d say that 200 folks pass through during the afternoon. Chuchos/street dogs populate around the meal tables, grabbing at chicken bones before they are swatted away, kicked maybe. Animals here are treated like large pests, not like back in the States. I try to defend the dogs but it’s a custom here, I make a huge frowny face and say “Pobre Tz’i” (K’iche’ for dog) to which they respond with laughter and smiles. It’s a different world.
In the Catholic church there’s a calendar of services after someone dies, so I believe his memory was honored today in the church service. We don’t do this in the protestant church (at least not how I grew up) but my family did visit the gravesite on anniversaries. We regularly visited the gravesite of my baby brother who died when I was young, and we visited the gravesites of many friends or loved ones we knew who passed. We changed out the flowers, we prayed, we talked to him. But I never left him a bottle of water.
At the end of the memorial lunch today, I rose and said “Provecho.” Don Gollo, father to the deceased, came over to greet me and Abby, he asked if we ate and then said “Provecho” as he walked to greet the next guests. Abby told me he cried at the gravesite and that she’s never seen him cry before.
Buen Provecho translates to Bon Appetite in English, according to google translate. And I find that interesting because Bon Appetite is not English… But we don’t have an equivalent in English to “Buen Provecho” or “Bon Appetite.” Maybe that’s why we stole from the French. I think we’d do well to eat with the dead and bring them water for their thirst, and borrow that tradition from the Mayan culture (and maybe other Ladino cultures, I don’t know the origin of this tradition). But I do hope that Doña Rosario is at peace, at rest.
My host family asked me if the candle they set at the gravesite the day before was still burning. I told them it wasn’t there, that it must have burned out. They said “Okay, that’s good.” And we ate together.
