Now, if there is one thing that is on every healthy person’s mind it is weight loss – if weight gain has climbed to unhealthy highs.
What’s more, we’re bombarded by ads everywhere about the importance of weight loss. But here in Mexico, the most convincing argument may have occurred during this past Day of the Dead.
Now, Dia de los Muertos for many is the consummate celebration of life, because it is an attempt to defy mortality and its foreverness. Children romp about the panteón as though it were a picnic. Mariachi and norteño bands play at the cemetery, becoming more exuberant than a 1960’s dance.
And, of course, families gather at gravesides to dine with the departed. Although I never understood why this continues year after year, when it is clear that the guest of honor (the deceased) has hardly touched his chicken mole. Sometimes, this loving and respectful familiarity with the graves and their occupants can go too far. This past Day of the Dead, a loving 62-year-old family member visited the grave of a close relative, who was interred in one of the city’s oldest graveyards. The man, probably in a fit of joyful and casual nonchalance, heaved himself up onto the crypt with a smile. But the crypt’s days of weathering and its modest construction couldn’t hold his weight. And the entire crypt collapsed into the grave, with the unfortunate man crashing onto his relative ten feet below, a reunion no one in the family expected.
Firefighters and paramedics arrived and CPR and other efforts were made, right down within the grave, a sight as ghoulish as any one might catch on the Day of the Dead. But the man was gone. Either from the broken spine he endured from the fall or the heart attack he apparently also suffered either before or after the accident. It obviously didn’t matter, because he was now dead and for all intents and purposes, buried. Cause of death didn’t matter, although finding yourself suddenly crushed into a grave pit would give anyone a heart attack. The self-interment happened in a matter of seconds. No one knows what the deceased sister might have thought. Family of course were in shock. They did not come to the panteón to bury their relative. The conclusion was that the crypt simply couldn’t support his weight and wasn’t designed for lounging visitors. One of the firefighters said the cover of the tomb hadn’t deteriorated, but even though it was thick, it couldn’t support the man’s weight. “We tried advanced CPR for 20 minutes while he was still in the grave, but it didn’t work,” a paramedic lamented.
The same day, November 2, on Dia de los Muertos, around the exact same time, two young boys fell into a grave in another Tlaquepaque cemetery, but apart from the fright they gave their parents, they only got a few scrapes and bruises.
Leaving the chicharrones, tortillas and flowers may no longer be enough. Are the spirits needing a hug?
If there is any moral to this story, it might be the importance of losing a few pounds.