Chapter 31: Cemetery and cakes

Chapter 31: Cemetery and cakes

“It’s time to pay your respects to the family and go to San Vicente,” said Thelma, the morning after our Day of the Dead excursion. Javier had sent money to have the family gravestones scrubbed and repainted so it was important for me to make an appearance.

There were so many tombs and so few able-bodied men living in San Vicente, that Day of the Dead was a lot of work for the women in the family, between cooking and gravestone preparation. Mama, Janeth and the twins had spent days making flower garlands of tissue paper, folding the light paper like origami to drape across the tombs.

“It was so much work,” said Alba, who looked exhausted, her thick hair in unruly curls and her apron stained with food. I felt guilty realizing I should have come and helped instead of going to a kite festival for ancestors who weren’t even related to me.

Mama Tayo had set a paper garland aside for me so we took it with us to the family cemetery. Set on the sunny side of a hilltop at the edge of town, the cemetery overlooked the western valley where the setting sun offered brilliant magenta skyscapes and the tombs were positioned to catch the day’s breezes. Although the temperature was 45C, under the shady branches of a massive sapote tree, the air seemed cool, the kind of place you might want to take a midday nap.

“Everyone from Mama Tallo’s side of the family is in this graveyard,” Lorena explained as we entered through a set of ornate wrought iron gates.

In honour of All Saints Day, each tombstone had been freshly scrubbed and painted, in vibrant shades of blue. Some were a rich indigo while others were a pale robin’s egg – each reflecting the clear blue dome of the desert sky.

“Where is Tia Luce’s tomb?” I asked, remembering the stories of Javier’s favourite aunt. Single her whole life and with no children to provide her with a proper burial, she made her first major investment when she turned 75. She bought a coffin.

She stored it by her bedside in her room.

“All you have to do when it’s your time is roll out of bed and into your coffin,” Javier had joked.

It had lain beside Tia Luce’s bedside for 20 years. When she died in her sleep at age 95, it was just a short move to the family cemetery.

“Tia Luce’s tomb is over there,” said Thelma pointing to a tomb in a picturesque corner of the graveyard. Freshly painted like the others, it was draped with a pretty garland of handmade paper flowers. It looked like a peaceful place to rest.

I stared down at the dry red earth. Javier planned to be buried here in San Vicente which meant if I was buried in Canada, we too would be buried apart.

There was no compelling reason to being buried in Canada. My family was literally scattered across the country. My grandparents were buried in Vancouver and my mother had asked to be cremated, her ashes scattered in the rose garden at Winnipeg’s Assiniboine Park.

“Just flush my ashes down the toilet,” my father had said.

A gravestone in San Vicente beside Javier suddenly sounded very inviting.

Ever since I’d met Javier I’d struggled with deciding where to live and now I had to decide where to die?