On Saturday April 5th, Señora Fransisca died. Now her whole family has gone back to Sullana and BJ, Magda and I are alone in the house.
Roses from our garden that Fransisca watered and trimmed and got to bloom so beautifully
Elena had recovered from her appendicitis operation and was going to visit her mother almost every day again, and I thought, it'd be nice to go with her one day and see Fransisca. On the 5th, Fransisca was going to have her gall bladder removed, a preliminary operation but one that she urgently needed before she could be healthy enough to get the heart valve transplant. I went with Elena early in the morning to see her before she went in for the operation, but we got there too late despite taking a taxi. Elena's two brothers arrived and we all sat waiting outside the operating area for several hours.
At around noon the brothers left to get money being wired to them by their family in Sullana. An hour later, the nurse called for a family member of Fransisca Saavedra, and Elena leaped up to go in. Five minutes later she came out, Ay Katalina mi mamá fallecióooooooo!!! and stumbled into my arms, wailing, disoriented, as if she couldn't see straight or think. She didn't even try to "hold it together." She just went to pieces. She couldn't help it. The people in the waiting area were very compassionate--they surrounded her, gave her water to drink, talked soothingly. I was crying too, holding her. It wasn't my grief, I didn't really know Fransisca very well, but the pain coming off Elena in waves shook me too. Then she got on her cell phone and started calling everyone she could; everyone who answered, she had to say it again, Mi mamá fallecio!, start crying again, hang up, call someone else. She was on the phone when her brother Lucho walked back in and heard what she was saying. Bam. Another person destroyed. Later Tito came back and got hit with it. It was like watching an entire family one by one walk up to the seashore and get pummelled by tsunami waves. Or like those anvils that always fall on those dumb little cartoon characters, times twenty. The news hitting each of them one by one, breaking them, and sweeping them away was so powerful that I couldn't do anything for them except get carried along by the ties of my friendship with Elena.
So I spent most of the day waiting. I watched their stuff for hours while they made funeral arrangements, and I called Magdalena to tell her the news--and she had to break it to the 12-year-old Rubén. I went to get everyone lunch at the hospital cafeteria, which they didn't eat, of course, but I did. Our lunch was paid for by a really sweet lady who was a patient on the same floor as Fransisca and had become her friend. She had a thick tube coming out from under her hospital gown, seemingly attached somewhere around her middle, with a big plastic bag on the end, bag and tube both a gross brown color; I didn't ask. After lunch I sat outside the morgue for several hours with an intense craving to eat a mango, but no money left except for my bus fare home. In the evening Magdalena brought Rubén to the hospital where a good crowd of family members had gathered, and the weight on that child when I saw him walk off the bus--he had the gravity of a planet, of a whole solar system, this kid who normally bounces around looking into everything with a beautiful light in his eyes. He hugged me a little when I greeted him, and then he went to his sister Elena and fell down on the floor in front of her and cried into her lap, and she cried over him. Lucho's wife and kids came, and I remember Lucho holding his 12-year-old brother with one arm and his 10-year-old son with the other, staring into space with grief on his face.
Anyway. Magda and I went back home to pack up the family's things; they wanted to travel straight from the hospital to the overnight buses that leave Lima for Piura and Sullana in the north. We got Carlos the taxista to take us back with the suitcases, then put the family in the taxi (by a very Peruvian squishing-miracle, all their stuff plus six people managed to fit in) to go to the bus station and went back home ourselves on the 02 at Plaza Grau. I'm very good at catching the 02 at Plaza Grau now, since I do it all the time coming back from Chaclacayo. It's a monstrous bus that likes to barrel right by you if the light is green, so in order to get on you have to wait behind the stoplight and then run out into the stopped traffic waving at the driver. I've even banged on the doors to get his attention on occasion (none of the Peruvians think this is weird.) Other buses are much easier to catch but they don't take you straight to Tupac, you have to get off and take another one at Huaylas or Metro, which takes longer, costs more, and involves waiting around in the dark at night.
And just like that, in one day, Fransisca was gone and her family had left. The house felt very quiet with just the three of us in it. Poor Rubén didn't even have the opportunity to say goodbye to Fe y Alegría, where he was starting to feel very comfortable, or to the church choir, or the new friends he'd made in Lima. It was thoroughly exhausting and in Mass the next day I had no energy to rehearse the songs with the congregation beforehand (I've done that now! A few weeks ago I got up in front of everyone and taught the Peruvians the Celtic Alleluia, which we always used to sing at Relay and at Maryland. I used to be terrified of singing on the microphone in church, much less teaching the congregation things before Mass, but I've gotten so used to standing in front of choirs lately that I was really surprised at how comfortable I felt doing it.) (My guitar skills are also much improved from last year and I have some ridiculous callouses on the tips of my left-hand fingers.)
We've talked to the family by phone a few times, and last Friday I went with some of the guys from the church choir to call Rubén on Elena's cell phone. I think he really appreciated hearing from them all. Magdalena also told me that when Rubén called her, he asked her to come up north and visit them sometime, "por favor with Katalina too!" I hope that I will have the opportunity this year to go see them in their home and see what their lives are like up north.
At around noon the brothers left to get money being wired to them by their family in Sullana. An hour later, the nurse called for a family member of Fransisca Saavedra, and Elena leaped up to go in. Five minutes later she came out, Ay Katalina mi mamá fallecióooooooo!!! and stumbled into my arms, wailing, disoriented, as if she couldn't see straight or think. She didn't even try to "hold it together." She just went to pieces. She couldn't help it. The people in the waiting area were very compassionate--they surrounded her, gave her water to drink, talked soothingly. I was crying too, holding her. It wasn't my grief, I didn't really know Fransisca very well, but the pain coming off Elena in waves shook me too. Then she got on her cell phone and started calling everyone she could; everyone who answered, she had to say it again, Mi mamá fallecio!, start crying again, hang up, call someone else. She was on the phone when her brother Lucho walked back in and heard what she was saying. Bam. Another person destroyed. Later Tito came back and got hit with it. It was like watching an entire family one by one walk up to the seashore and get pummelled by tsunami waves. Or like those anvils that always fall on those dumb little cartoon characters, times twenty. The news hitting each of them one by one, breaking them, and sweeping them away was so powerful that I couldn't do anything for them except get carried along by the ties of my friendship with Elena.
So I spent most of the day waiting. I watched their stuff for hours while they made funeral arrangements, and I called Magdalena to tell her the news--and she had to break it to the 12-year-old Rubén. I went to get everyone lunch at the hospital cafeteria, which they didn't eat, of course, but I did. Our lunch was paid for by a really sweet lady who was a patient on the same floor as Fransisca and had become her friend. She had a thick tube coming out from under her hospital gown, seemingly attached somewhere around her middle, with a big plastic bag on the end, bag and tube both a gross brown color; I didn't ask. After lunch I sat outside the morgue for several hours with an intense craving to eat a mango, but no money left except for my bus fare home. In the evening Magdalena brought Rubén to the hospital where a good crowd of family members had gathered, and the weight on that child when I saw him walk off the bus--he had the gravity of a planet, of a whole solar system, this kid who normally bounces around looking into everything with a beautiful light in his eyes. He hugged me a little when I greeted him, and then he went to his sister Elena and fell down on the floor in front of her and cried into her lap, and she cried over him. Lucho's wife and kids came, and I remember Lucho holding his 12-year-old brother with one arm and his 10-year-old son with the other, staring into space with grief on his face.
Anyway. Magda and I went back home to pack up the family's things; they wanted to travel straight from the hospital to the overnight buses that leave Lima for Piura and Sullana in the north. We got Carlos the taxista to take us back with the suitcases, then put the family in the taxi (by a very Peruvian squishing-miracle, all their stuff plus six people managed to fit in) to go to the bus station and went back home ourselves on the 02 at Plaza Grau. I'm very good at catching the 02 at Plaza Grau now, since I do it all the time coming back from Chaclacayo. It's a monstrous bus that likes to barrel right by you if the light is green, so in order to get on you have to wait behind the stoplight and then run out into the stopped traffic waving at the driver. I've even banged on the doors to get his attention on occasion (none of the Peruvians think this is weird.) Other buses are much easier to catch but they don't take you straight to Tupac, you have to get off and take another one at Huaylas or Metro, which takes longer, costs more, and involves waiting around in the dark at night.
And just like that, in one day, Fransisca was gone and her family had left. The house felt very quiet with just the three of us in it. Poor Rubén didn't even have the opportunity to say goodbye to Fe y Alegría, where he was starting to feel very comfortable, or to the church choir, or the new friends he'd made in Lima. It was thoroughly exhausting and in Mass the next day I had no energy to rehearse the songs with the congregation beforehand (I've done that now! A few weeks ago I got up in front of everyone and taught the Peruvians the Celtic Alleluia, which we always used to sing at Relay and at Maryland. I used to be terrified of singing on the microphone in church, much less teaching the congregation things before Mass, but I've gotten so used to standing in front of choirs lately that I was really surprised at how comfortable I felt doing it.) (My guitar skills are also much improved from last year and I have some ridiculous callouses on the tips of my left-hand fingers.)
We've talked to the family by phone a few times, and last Friday I went with some of the guys from the church choir to call Rubén on Elena's cell phone. I think he really appreciated hearing from them all. Magdalena also told me that when Rubén called her, he asked her to come up north and visit them sometime, "por favor with Katalina too!" I hope that I will have the opportunity this year to go see them in their home and see what their lives are like up north.
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