Death

Death is neat, tidy, and hidden in America. Corpses are not seen until they are cleaned up and painted for wakes and as soon as a person is declared dead, their body is covered with a cloth or blanket. Instead of saying that people die, many say they pass away. Children are not exposed to death and death is neither gruesome nor publicly bloody—but here, death is a grisly public affair.

Open any Honduran newspaper and flip through the first ten pages and you will see a photo of a car accident victim or a murder victim. These photos are not for those with weak stomachs. Just recently, a seminarian was killed in a car accident. Driving at high speeds, he lost control of his car three days before his ordination. As if the story itself wasn’t tragic enough, the press captured every personal and unnecessary moment in photos. One photo showed the destroyed car—pretty typical for all journalism. Another photo showed the girl who was the passenger in the car lying on a stretcher obviously cut and suffering from lesions to her body struggling barely to hold on to her life. And then the last photo was of a lady pulling a bloody cloth of the face of the lifeless seminarian who was on a morgue table splattered with blood. These photos are not even the worst of what we have seen in the newspaper—and this is a daily affair. Death is not covered up and the gruesomeness of death seems to make it a better news story.

In a similar manner, in day to day life, death is not covered or hidden. In fact, I saw my first real dead body in Honduras. As we traveled to San Pedro Sula about a month ago, we were driving through Tegucigalpa when traffic came to a slow. As we passed by the obstruction, we saw a bicycle strewn across the road, a car, and a body lying on the road. He was bleeding from his stomach and the police were standing beside his body. We were driving in the heart of rush hour traffic and nothing was being done to cover this man’s body. Gasps from our car were quickly followed by the heavy silence of minds in prayer.

Such a sight was shocking for us—a group of four twenty some things, but for Honduran children, this is not out of the normal. They are used to death in a strangely comfortable way. In the first couple of months we were here in Talanga, a man was killed—someone tried to cut his head off and failed leaving a couple of arteries still attaching his head to his neck. Gruesome and bloody yes I know. But who did we get this news from? We were told about the murder from two little girls (8 and 9) who sell us banana pancakes most afternoons. It had happened in their neighborhood and they had seen the body with the head.

And so that is death in Honduras—grisly and horrible—but then there is also a very different side that came out on Day of the Dead. Whole families go to the cemetery to decorate grave stones with beautiful flower arrangements and bring crowns to place on the grave stones. They bring food and drinks to enjoy the day and it is a joyous celebration of the lives of those who have died. It is a beautiful day and the markets fill with flower vendors. Children bring games to the cemeteries and help their parents with decorating.
Two very different sides of death.