Juan Primo

It has been a long day for my friend Victor. He just left my house now around 9:30pm after a short visit. He had asked to borrow my sleeping pad as there are many people staying over at his house tonight. That is because his dad died this morning. I knew his dad was sick and that they took him to the hospital about a week ago. But it was this morning, when I walked passed Victor’s house on my way to get something for breakfast, that I realized he had probably died last night. The abundant stacks of white plastic chairs in front of their house were the giveaway. They always show up in this country around funeral time. I also noticed some men trying to fix up the entrance to their house/colmado . I agree that it was kind of dangerous, at least for older people. I had even been close to twisting an ankle or falling into the open whole in the gutter a few times before.

After I had done a few things I needed to do this morning I figured it was time to head over there and show my support and pay my respects, all while not knowing exactly what to say. Words are hard at these types of things. They don’t really work for me, especially Spanish ones. I think we learn how to consol with the right words in one language but it’s not necessarily the same in another. But I went over there and participated in my first Dominican grieving process anyway. I didn’t see my friend then but gave his sister and mom a hug and sat down in one of those white plastic chairs and watched people come in and out to look at Juan Primo for the last time. I remember how my seat was right in front of the casket but I guess now everyone else was as well since Victor’s house is pretty small and we were all lined up around the wall. The casket was a simple grey wooden box, sort of triangle shaped with a little glass window to see the face. I noticed how the small engraved metal descanso en paz plaque directly in front of me was only hanging on by one nail. I wondered about that. Was this a money saving technique and could they really be this poor? There was not one thing extravagant about this casket.

I sat there in my chair along the wall with the others, family and friends of Juan Primo. My friend Victor is the 15th and his sister Jaque the 14th in Juan Primos’ seemingly never ending line of children. I’m not sure exactly how many mothers were involved in all of this but it’s more then a few. And at first this rubbed my American upbringing wrong, very wrong. But since, I have thought that this may not be completely unlike what is going on generally in this country. It’s that this guy maybe did not have had any condoms around to keep things under control. And I’ve tried hard to keep this from affecting my view of Victor or his sister. So to say the least, there were a large number of family there today.

At 4pm everyone gathered around the house and waited until they were ready to bring out Juan Primo and take him to the cemetery. I looked around and noticed pretty much the whole town there. For some reason I was surprised but at the same time not. I thought it was pretty cool how everyone was there to show their support. We all waited to follow Victor’s family on a windy and rainy walk behind an old Toyota Camry Station Wagon (or hearse) up to the community cemetery were Juan Primo was to be buried. I was struck by the kind of informality of the whole process. I don’t know if informality is the word but kids were running around on the different above ground graves and the guy who is the town drunk and also apparently the cemeteries mason was kind of rude and I felt he was being a little unprofessional as he was closing up the small tomb. He was very vocal about how he was just doing his job and not getting paid for crowd control when ladies would get a little too loud or close. Then everybody just kind of left. There wasn’t a long drawn out thing and no flowers. We don’t really have a florist here anyway.

Tonight when Victor came over I was glad to see him and he looked to me to be doing well for having lost his dad. We talked for a while and I tried to keep the conversation on other stuff like how we need to play more chess and guitar. But then he began to talk about his dad and the last week or so that he was in the hospital. And I began to understand a little better about what goes on in this country and in so many other poor places like it. Victor’s dad suffered from high blood pressure among other things and Victor had to go to the pharmacy himself while his dad was in the hospital to get the right meds, and described to me how he would give them to his dad himself. But it turned out that one day at the pharmacy they got mixed up a bit and gave Victor the wrong meds. That was really too bad. Sped up the whole thing. And when his dad needed to use the bathroom it was Victor’s responsibility to help him with that, as well as changing and cleaning his dipper when he didn’t make it out of the bed. I did wonder if there were nurses in this hospital but decided not to ask. I also remembered in times past when I would be buying something or another at the family’s colmado Victor would have to leave our conversation hanging and run to help his dad to the bathroom or go bath him. Always sounding excited like he was about to get a new guitar and just couldn’t wait to play it.

Then Victor told me how his dad died at 11:30pm last night and they shipped him home at about 12:30 and that he was up all last night helping to wash and clean his dad. And I thought how in the states we have all these types of dirty and hard things outsourced to licensed specialists who we pay lots of money to. But here there isn’t that privilege and so Victor had to handle his reciently dead dad himself. What a thing for a 14 year old to do. And I started to understand maybe why I was seeing Dominicans taking a not so serious or kind of been through it all before attitude to this whole process. They have been through it before and literally gotten their hands dirty when neighbors or family have died. They don’t have anyone to take care of it for them and are forced to deal with every aspect of it all.

Now the customary nine days of mourning start and people will sit under the tent provided by Roberto Rodriguez and embossed with his shinny and tacky political photo. They will sit in those white plastic chairs for what sometimes seems to me the whole day. Some people will be in charge of cooking a big caldero of food for everyone so no one will have to go home and make lunch. And another person will come around with saucers full of small plastic cups juice for whoever may be out there. And they will just sit and maybe talk about politics, weather, crops, or Juan Primo.