The Toltec Art of Life and Death. Barbara Emrys
Lala looked through the crowd until she spotted him, an eleven-year-old standing close to his mother and looking up at her face as she sobbed savagely. As other relatives moved in to console her, she turned from her son to fall into the arms of her husband. Losing sight of his parents in the crush of people, Miguel edged carefully away, studying the scene from the shade of the elm tree, where his older brothers had gathered in troubled silence.
“This is bad,” said his grandfather from his post beside Sarita. “No one is attending to the boys. Yes, they are almost grown, except for Miguel, but this is a heartbreak for them, too. How is it that we neglect the innocent, the uninitiated, in our selfish wish to grieve?”
“Oh, they are initiated,” the redhead responded, anxiously rubbing Sarita’s wrist. “They have already memorized the script to this piece of human theater. They will survive, of course, by donning their costumes and shouting their well-rehearsed lines to the balcony, just like everyone else. To tell the truth, this is what makes me enthusiastic about humankind. Mindful drama.”
Don Leonardo looked at her, astonished. “Mindful?”
“Just look,” she said. “You are a great one for looking.”
The two of them turned to watch the assembly of mourners. Everyone was now crowded around the grave site in a tight circle—men, women, small children, and bewildered teenagers. Sara, the grieving mother, was at the center. A priest could be heard speaking, but he was barely visible within the throng. Then, after a few moments, even his words were lost, for a wailing rose from the group that was both chilling and disquieting, a sound that obliterated every other sound. Rising from the initial soft moan of one woman’s grief, there came a chorus of moans that grew and grew until it felt like a torrent of sorrow, the hymn of a thousand bereaved mothers. Beneath its refrain thrummed the resonant murmur of men, comforting and consoling. The noise swept skyward, up and around in random circles, until it finally reached a crescendo and plummeted to Earth. Up and down it went—swirling, spiraling, plummeting. In the midst of its fury, the priest shouted out, inviting the bereaved to offer parting gifts to the deceased—flowers, notes, rosaries. As the mourners began performing their ritual farewells, the sorrowful background voices began to falter. Wailing settled into whimpering. Finally, the cacophony faded to scratchy silence, like a musical masterpiece lost in the final grooves of an old phonograph record. The funeral was over, and the crowd scattered onto the grassy hillside in separate little bunches, each one advancing toward a waiting car.
Throughout this remarkable scene, little Miguel stood by the elm tree where he had earlier gone to join his brothers. After the brothers had joined the group at the gravesite, Miguel remained by himself, watching and listening. Don Leonardo kept his attention on the boy; he followed the whimsical patterns and images that moved through the youngster’s mind. The child was seeing the drama—the great skirmish of emotion that was playing out in front of him—without submitting to the spell of it. As Leonardo dreamed with the boy, he began to relax and to remember, his mouth curling into a sly smile that flitted across his face and found refuge in his knowing eyes.
The death of my older brother was a devastating event for me and for the whole family. He was nineteen years old, and already a husband and a father. Of course, he was still a child to most of the adults around him, and certainly in the eyes of his mother. His death came by surprise, as it does when it touches the very young. Then again, young men seem to woo death like zealous lovers. Memín drove fast, and with reckless pleasure. At nineteen, young men are gods; we are immortal, because we say so. Never mind those who worry over us and who would give their lives for us. And yet, at nineteen Memín was the head of his own family. His young bride was pregnant with their second child. He had already accumulated heavy responsibilities, even as he careened headlong into manhood. Before he could reach it, however, he was killed at the wheel of his speeding car. His little family was with him, and thankfully they survived. In that sense, he lived on through his children, but the brave and blazing light that was Memín went out forever.
By the time I myself was nineteen, I also was too arrogant to listen, and too full of life to respect the nearness of death. In those heedless years, I drank too much, partied too much, and eventually pushed fate against a concrete wall in my merry insolence. I would have courted danger to the point of death, like my oldest brother, had something not prevented me. But something did, and I lived to grow a little wiser. I lived to achieve the promise of wisdom that life makes to every child.
Such wisdom was an integral part of me when I was very young and hadn’t yet lost it in the deep hormone drifts of adolescence. At eleven years old, I was still thoughtful. I may even have been wise. I had my dreams, and I had my heroes. Like my other brothers, I saw Memín as an action hero. Certainly, he was always in action; he was always moving, running, speeding, laughing. He chased schemes, goals, girls, and we assumed that nothing could stop him from catching all of them. Wasn’t he faster than time? Wasn’t he quicker than destiny, and stronger than doubt? Wasn’t he the coolest guy we knew? It took a long time after his death to realize that Memín—brother and action figure—would no longer be playing among us.
Strangely, his most lasting gift to me—the youngest brother who played such a small part in his life—was his funeral. My childish thoughts moved toward a kind of wisdom that day. Standing among my relatives, I felt as if I had two families: one was caught up in a scene from one of Mamá’s telenovelas, in which each character, played by actors with varying talents, wreaked havoc in his own life and the lives of others. My other family communicated through impressions, feelings, and encouragements. This second family might not have existed at all, or they might have been right there, living with me. They might have been my mother, my father, and my brothers, talking to me beneath the noise of their randomly spoken words.
There might have also been a third family with me that day—I could have been sensing a lingering trace of my ancestors. The old ones were gone but not gone, and all of them were wiser than I. Whatever that connection was, I felt I had company that morning when we buried Memín. The mystifying presence of the old ones stayed with me throughout the day, even as we left the cemetery and went home . . . and the family’s bitter tears turned inexplicably to laughter.
That’s right. As if someone had changed the channel on our tiny black-and-white television, the mood of the group lightened miraculously when the front door opened and women poured into the house to lay out platters of food. Suddenly I was watching a different kind of spectacle. In this one, the women gossiped, the children played, and after a few beers, the men took turns telling hilarious stories about my dead brother.
I saw how people put on arbitrary faces and took them off—on cue, and following each other’s lead. Racked with grief in one instant, they needed just a little encouragement to remove the grief masks and start again with a joke and a smile. They kept up with each other, mirroring responses back and forth, eyebrows twisting and lips moving to the words someone else was speaking. Oh, there was food on the tables, and everyone ate well that afternoon, but I saw for the first time how nobody missed a bite from life’s emotional buffet.
And it wasn’t all good. With every bite of biscochito, they took two doses of poison—feasting on scandal, sharing disapproval, spreading rumors. A kind woman would say unkind things about someone else, inexplicably. A grown man would seem pleasantly congenial one moment and fighting mad the next, for no other reason but that a particular word had been uttered. A word, a phrase, a look, a shrug—what more did they need? I’d been learning how to act this way for years, without realizing that I had become a master at it. It was already easy for me, at eleven years old. It was automatic, but when I watched everyone else that day, I felt the wrenching shock that comes with sudden awareness.
Emotions seemed to be feeding something I couldn’t see. They ran unchecked through each human body, causing sickness and frenzy—but for what reason? There was nothing about sadness, anger, or joy that was wrong. I remembered a time in my childhood when emotions ran through me like river sprites—they touched me, changed me, and then vanished without leaving a scar. These people, though, were scarred in ways I couldn’t see, and the pain was