Death and Grieving: A Cultural Experience

Death and grieving are part of the human experience - but how they are experienced is very much personal and dependent on cultural practices. In my almost 9 months in Peru I have witnessed a seemingly large quantity of loss and suffering. A family's two year old daughter.  My host mom's mourning of her mother's passing.  Another host mom remembering her daughter taken at just 4 years old. A friend's host family who lost a son.  A neighbor crying for the loss of 4 of her 10 children.  

While death is a part of every culture, there seems to be more of it here.  And even more terrible in how unnecessary some deaths are.  When I hear a friend's 2-year-old niece has a high fever, I do not think death could even be an option.  When my host nephew broke his leg, I did not understand the tears, prayers, and worry.  My wild child little brother has broken his arm multiple times and my parents took him to the hospital, got surgery or casts or whatever was necessary, picked up a pizza and called it an interesting day in the Langford household.  

So when host moms cry when we don't eat enough, or when we have a particularly hard time with the ever present diarrhea and don't call the doctors or take medicine, I didn't understand.  I didn't understand the worry, the panic.  In America we have colds, we get stomach bugs, and in a few short days life goes back to normal.  But now I have been to enough memorials, enough services, seen enough tears and heard enough stories from grieving relatives to understand that all too often that broken leg, that cold, that upset stomach can take a turn for the worse and end in death when first world infrastructure, medicine, and hygiene are not readily available. 

In America, as a culture, we recognize the inevitability of death and do what we can to remove ourselves from the suffering.  We go through the quick steps of visitation, funeral, and burial to put the grief away and continue on.  And of course we do.  Grief hurts. Suffering is hard. 

Contrarily, Peru drags out the process. There is a wake at the house followed by a catholic service and burial.  The family dawns black apparel and refrains from dancing or celebrating for a one year mourning period.  There is another catholic service at the grave after 6 months and again on the anniversary of the death every year, indefinitely.  The person is also remembered maybe through a service or maybe just by family members going to the cemetery on his or her birthday every year, indefinitely.  In this way, it feels the dead are never fully laid to rest - they are always present and continuously mourned.  

There is not a right or wrong way to grieve - just as there is not a right or wrong way to live. There are simply the different practices we adopt as cultures and then as individuals to best endure the suffering and best honor our loved ones.   

During my time in Peru, I have seen and experienced much death, as described above, and lost a great aunt at home.  Then just this week I read another story from a volunteer's experience of a funeral during her service in Ghana and read Mitch Albom's book For One More Day. With that, I decided to write on the different experiences of death and suffering in America and my host country of Peru.