It comes in threes
Apr. 5th, 2024 04:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dornishviperxLast year it rang in my ears when my friend, at her grandfather's funeral, said to me, "dicen que la muerte se lleva de a tres" with the sort of expectant air of someone who holds their breath before going underwater. It was hot out, and the cemetery was a grassy plain in the middle of the desert-like arid hills in the north of Santiago. There's a slaughterhouse not far from there, because Quilicura is an industrial area, a dumping ground for city waste where the water isn't safe to drink. There wasn't any wind that day, but I could smell the rotting animal meat nearby as we drove into the park. I got a mean sunburn in my back to remember her sad, sad eyes with when I tried to lie on my back to sleep that night, and drank some tap water that surely did not do me any favors.
Three days later, her best friend's grandmother died, and a few weeks later, a mutual friend's aunt succumbed to a months-long terminal cancer.
At the beginning of March this year, I saw the sharp curve of the metaphorical scythe gleaming in the harsh white lights of the bright hallways of the ICU. My grandfather stopped recognizing me three days into his hospitalization but he still smiled at me for as long as his body was still able to produce a smile. The last person he stopped recognizing was my grandmother - ostensibly, his mind went, and he didn't know who she was. But his body calmed down from its spasms when she held his hand. I think the flesh knows things. He died three days before his heart finally stopped, pained, writhing, crying, and finally so very still and quiet in the hospital bed. My mother and my aunt hugged him for hours. They held him and held him and held him until his body was so cold that I couldn't bear to even touch my lips to his forehead when the funeral home arrived with the casket. The doctor was late in signing the death certificate: he died minutes past midnight, but it was five in the morning by the time we left the hospital. He was so green by the time they took him away.
One.
Yesterday my uncle - 52 years old, a chain smoker and occasional drinker with a cholesterol problem - was cleaning the roof. It's autumn now, though you can hardly tell with the heat. It almost never rains in Santiago anymore, but the foundations of his house aren't very strong and the public drain infrastructure in Lo Prado isn't very good. It's worth making sure the roof is clean. It's worth avoiding a flood, because my (other) grandmother, who lives with him because she cannot live alone, has knees that creak and swell in pain when it gets cold and wet. He came down, and his arm hurt. She told him to rest, and got him some tea because he was so, so pale. There was something wrong. She only thought of calling the pastor from her church, and his heart stopped as they prayed for him. When I got there, running to her place as soon as I heard what happened, the body was still there because the public hospital didn't have any doctors available to certify his death, which meant the funeral home couldn't take him. I paid 60.000$ for a doctor, 200.000$ for the funeral home, and 3.700.000$ for the tiny plot of land where he will be buried tomorrow - with space for one more person, eventually, for whoever needs it first - and only then did they take the body away from his bed. His face was bruised and purple, and his mouth had slid open, something bubbling inside of it. This time I touched the body before they put him in the casket, and I felt sick.
Two.
"Dicen que la muerte se lleva de a tres." I hear my friend's voice at night. She's distraught; I am too.
Three?
Three days later, her best friend's grandmother died, and a few weeks later, a mutual friend's aunt succumbed to a months-long terminal cancer.
At the beginning of March this year, I saw the sharp curve of the metaphorical scythe gleaming in the harsh white lights of the bright hallways of the ICU. My grandfather stopped recognizing me three days into his hospitalization but he still smiled at me for as long as his body was still able to produce a smile. The last person he stopped recognizing was my grandmother - ostensibly, his mind went, and he didn't know who she was. But his body calmed down from its spasms when she held his hand. I think the flesh knows things. He died three days before his heart finally stopped, pained, writhing, crying, and finally so very still and quiet in the hospital bed. My mother and my aunt hugged him for hours. They held him and held him and held him until his body was so cold that I couldn't bear to even touch my lips to his forehead when the funeral home arrived with the casket. The doctor was late in signing the death certificate: he died minutes past midnight, but it was five in the morning by the time we left the hospital. He was so green by the time they took him away.
One.
Yesterday my uncle - 52 years old, a chain smoker and occasional drinker with a cholesterol problem - was cleaning the roof. It's autumn now, though you can hardly tell with the heat. It almost never rains in Santiago anymore, but the foundations of his house aren't very strong and the public drain infrastructure in Lo Prado isn't very good. It's worth making sure the roof is clean. It's worth avoiding a flood, because my (other) grandmother, who lives with him because she cannot live alone, has knees that creak and swell in pain when it gets cold and wet. He came down, and his arm hurt. She told him to rest, and got him some tea because he was so, so pale. There was something wrong. She only thought of calling the pastor from her church, and his heart stopped as they prayed for him. When I got there, running to her place as soon as I heard what happened, the body was still there because the public hospital didn't have any doctors available to certify his death, which meant the funeral home couldn't take him. I paid 60.000$ for a doctor, 200.000$ for the funeral home, and 3.700.000$ for the tiny plot of land where he will be buried tomorrow - with space for one more person, eventually, for whoever needs it first - and only then did they take the body away from his bed. His face was bruised and purple, and his mouth had slid open, something bubbling inside of it. This time I touched the body before they put him in the casket, and I felt sick.
Two.
"Dicen que la muerte se lleva de a tres." I hear my friend's voice at night. She's distraught; I am too.
Three?
