Manuel’s father passed away last night.
And…well YAY GOD! He is with Jesus.
We are sad only because we miss him.
But I wanted to share what has taken place in the last few hours. It has been an emotional roller coaster mixed with a lesson in the way some Ticos handle a death in the family.
I can joyfully share what I’m going to because the Lord has given us so many awesome gifts while we have been here in Costa Rica these last 2 1/2 months. One of them being – we had all this time to spend with Manuel’s 93-year-old father while he was alive and well.
But even more than that, he went from sitting outside in his favorite chair on Saturday morning to spending only one night in the hospital resting quietly before he peacefully went to be with Jesus.
And if God has not been gracious enough to us, Manuel and I got to share Papa’s last few moments here on this earth with him. We were able to pray with him and release peace over him and talk to him. And moments after we walked out of the hospital, he met Jesus face to face. What a wonderful gift for us from our Lord to have had these special times with him, considering we have been out of the country for most of the last 3 years.
However…
We didn’t find out that he left this world until…
later that night.
So we arrived back to Papa’s house to let Manuel’s sister know how he was doing, only to have barely gotten into the house and hear that he had passed away. Everyone was crying and hugging and doing things that people do when they first get the news that a loved one has passed on.
And there we all were.
Until…
Another call.
Seems he hasn’t really passed away. They just want the family to all come down to the hospital, because he is more critical than before.
Hmmm. Well… Oooo Kaaaay
That was sad.
Happy.
Bizarre.
Relief.
So back to the hospital.
…only to hear…that actually he did pass away.
But the hospital personnel didn’t want to give us that news over the phone…though they already actually had…of course until they called back to revoke it.
Okey dokey.
So now what?
I suppose we all go home.
Right?
And wait for the funeral tomorrow? (they bury people quickly here)
Well no not exactly. We are waiting for the body to be released.
For it to go to the funeral home.
Right?
Uh no. It will be released, but his body will go to his house, so the family can prepare the body and put his burial clothes on …
And should I say?
OK…I will.
Family members will spend the next hour driving from pharmacy to pharmacy looking for rubber gloves, and formaldehyde to inject into the body.
Excuse me?
Now I did overhear that they could have had someone from the funeral home come to the house and do that for them. But in the end, seemed that the family wanted to do it all themselves.
I might add that the family did not include me at this moment.
Ooooo Kaaaaay.
I think I might just go on home now.
Then what?
Well then they will take his body to the capilla ( a place near the cemetery) to sit with him all night, as people come and go to see him.
All – night.
Then the funeral will be the next day bright and early.
Well since I wasn’t much help (no help) last night, surely I can handle going with Manuel and his brother to the cemetery and county office to get the grave site ready.
So we paid the $30.00 owed on the plot that had been reserved for Papa and walked out to the cemetery to hunt for the plot. That was no small feat. Lots of graves and not many names.
Finally there it was Familia Lobo Miranda. Manuel’s mother had been buried there 19 years ago. So Papa’ will go right next to her.
Right?
Not exactly. He will actually go underneath her grave.
And this is only if he has been paying the yearly fee. Because if not. Then someone else has the right to be buried there and not Papa, says the nice lady who works for the municipalidad (county). And even – unless the family specifies it and continues to pay on it, they will bury other people in that spot in the coming years as well.
Okey Doke.
So now we were talking to Hugo who digs the graves and he says he remembers burying Manuel’s mother 19 years ago. And he remembers Papa’, since he was the one who paid him for digging the grave back then too. And it will be $100.00 to dig this grave…only because he has to dig from the side and then underneath the other one.
Ooooo Kaaaaay
Well we go to the church at 10:30 for the service and then back to the cemetery for the burial. All goes pretty well as the men carry the casket on their shoulders to the site and then lower him down with a regular old rope and then try to push the casket under the other one.
All was going pretty well…
Until… it wasn’t.
Seems that there was a metal bar or something in the way.
Okey Dokey
So after several tense moments of struggling and pushing and pulling, a couple of men just hop down into that hole and rearrange things and then slide the casket right under the other one to rest…forever.
Or maybe not.
In 5 years from now, someone else’s family might just come and have Hugo dig up this grave and place another body in this plot. I guess since Costa Rica is a small country, there’s not a lot of room for cemeteries?
Don’t ask me. I’m learning as I go here.
I write all this today, not to dishonor Papa, or Tico’s on how they do funerals or handle death, but actually it makes me wonder if we in other countries like the states are too far removed from the death of a loved one?
I mean…is it even legal to take the body from the hospital to your house in the states?
I don’t know.
We Americans pay thousands of dollars to the funeral home and have someone else take care of all the preparing of the body for us. I’m not saying anything is wrong with that; heck, I think I like that (except the part of about the thousands of dollars). But it has got me to thinking of how we view death in the states.
I think including the casket we paid $750.00 total. And it was a pretty nice wood casket.
Now don’t get me wrong. There are many private funeral homes and cemeteries around Costa Rica that you are more than welcome to spend way more that $750.00 on a funeral. And again they can do all the work of preparing the body and more for you. But not only was this a lesson for me in doing funerals another way, it has given me a different perspective on death. I mean, it is a big part of life. It happens every day. But we remove ourselves far away from it.
Why?
Is that even healthy?
Well I don’t have the answers.
Just thinking.
Wondering.
Until we see you again Papa’, and our other loved ones who have gone before us.
mangos to grizzlies 
Your post brought back a lot of memories from our early years in Costa Rica. Not that I was involved in the same way you were, but we did attend a lot of funerals. Especially when we lived in Turrialba. Our first year there (which was 1954 after we spent 1953 in language school in San José) we shared a duplex, pared por medio, as they say. Anyway the father of the woman on the other side of the flimsy wall died and she carried on like I had never heard in my life, screaming and hollering by the hour. I was still young, like 25, so it made quite an impression.
“For Whom the Bell Tolls” took on meaning for me in our Turrialba years. So mournful to hear the bells of the Catholic church tolling the death of yet another person. It seem there was no hope in those days. Funerals in the Iglesia Evangélica, catty-corner across the park from the Iglesia Católica, were so different. Sad, yes, but there was confidence in Jesus. It was a long way from the church to the center of town, across the railroad, then a mile up the hill to the cemetery, but I walked it many a time with the grieving family.
Aziel preached a funeral in our later years in Costa Rica that I remember well. Old don Moisés had come to Jesus on his deathbed. His adult children who had come to the Lord through our ministry in Grano de Oro wanted Aziel to do the funeral and I played the piano for the service which was in the evangelical church in Juan Viñas. He had at least sixteen children and some were still Catholic. They came to the service, and then took the body to the Catholic Church in Turrialba for a funeral mass. (Incidentally, you have have know one of his grandsons. Steven got a job for young Moisés with Bob Wilmarth and through that connection Moi met Cathy. They married at the chapel at Bob’s and Peter performed the ceremony. We were there, were you? They now live in South Carolina.)
Actually, both of my own parents are buried in Costa Rica. They moved to Santa Ana when my father retired in 1974. He died in 1977 in the Clínica Bíblica with all of us around his bed. Quite an experience. He was buried in Jardín de Recuerdo in Heredia and I suppose far more money was paid for that than for Manuel’s father. When my mother passed away, also in the Clínica Bíblica, in 1979, Aziel and I were on furlough. In the Lord’s goodness and with the help of Cameron’s mom, I was able to catch a plane that same day and made it to the funeral the next day. Both their funerals were at the International Baptist Church, which in those days was in San Pedro, not in Guachipelín. If they had died in the States, I doubt that anyone would have been at the funeral, but all our missionary friends and many other friends came to their funerals. Mother is buried in the same plot with Dad, like Manuel’s parents.
Anyway, I am so glad that you and Manuel were in Costa Rica for the last months of his father’s life. And glad that he went peacefully. The Lord surely led you to go back when you did. But I hope you come back SOON.
Love and prayers, Marian
Yes, of course I know Moises and Cathy very well. Cathy went to LSU and I was at their wedding and had her shower at my house. I think you were there!
Even though Papa had come to the Lord (and was no longer going to mass) several years ago before we left Costa Rica and so had Teresa his daughter, they had a Catholic funeral ( I suppose for all the cousins and such). It was OK…but now they are doing the 7 day Rosario where they pray for the person’s soul? or something? I dont’ know? I don’t really get it? I feel it is has a lot to do with tradition.
I didn’t know that the IBC was located in San Pedro at one point? I didn’t even know it had been around for that long? I know several people who go to that church.
…and I hope we come back soon too!