Death in Guatemala

Last Monday was a day not unlike any other. We went to school in the morning. In the afternoon I did some studying and prepared for our Monday night Bible study that we have been doing with two other couples. A little before the time of our study, one couple stopped by to let us know they couldn't make it due to other obligations they had to take care of. The other couple, Mario and Amalia, arrived late and we began talking while they opened a baby shower gift we had given them. Amalia was 8 months pregnant at the time. After a while we all decided we were hungry and wanted to go to Burger King and "hang out" together for a bit. They had informed us that earlier that day Amalia had an ultrasound and everything was going along normal in the pregnancy. The night ended and all were happy and content. The following afternoon I received a call from our pastor's wife informing me that Mario and Amalia had just gone to the doctor and found out that the baby had died. They were on their way to the hospital with our pastor. Sherri and I quickly got ready and headed off to the hospital to offer our comfort, support, and prayers (perhaps, we thought, it was a mistaken diagnosis). We got there too late as the pastor and Mario had already left. We tried to visit Amalia but the hospital would not allow it. Even though we knew they were inducing labor and we didn't want her to be alone during this trial, they told us "Visiting hours are from 2-3 tomorrow." The doctors gave her drugs to induce labor and put her in a room completely alone. As the contractions started to come, and the pain with them, she tried to remain calm but at times the pain was too great to bear and she called out for help. At that, a nurse would poke their head into the room and tell her to "shut up." She received no help until the baby's head was well on its way out. She delivered the baby, lifeless, at midnight. Wednesday AM they offered her a small piece of bread and half a Dixie cup of something to drink.The last time she had eaten was Tuesday morning. That was all she had to eat in 24 hours. The next morning we went to the hospital with Mario and our pastor and found out that Amalia had been stuck in a room all by herself. The hospital hadn't allowed calls nor visits, not even from her husband, for 24 hours. She was alone.  Mario wasn't able to see her until after 10 AM that morning. During all this time he didn't know if it was a boy or girl, if his wife was okay, or anything. In order to comfort and help them our pastor wanted our church to take care of all the funeral arrangements and began busily calling members of the church to arrange various aspects of the funeral. At one point in the day he turned to me and said, "They sure don't teach you how to deal with these types of situations in school." When someone dies in Guatemala, there is a HUGE amount of paperwork. Of course, for anything in Guatemala there is a huge amount of paperwork. It was my job along with my friend Elvido to go and get some of the paperwork done. Mario's ID was basically shredded due to wear and tear so Elvido and I had to go to RENAP in order to try to replace it or get some kind of permission granted in order to get permission from the municipality to get the body so we could bury it. That took a few hours of waiting, running here and there, waiting some more, and finally we got it done. Our next task was to bring the paperwork back to the hospital and pick up the body. Elvido had already arranged for a casket which we had in our possession. So we arrived at the hospital and were directed to the morgue. Words cannot express what happened next. We finally got into the morgue after knocking on more than one door. We talked to the man in charge and explained what we wanted to do. We had brought some baby clothes with us that someone from the church had picked up for us so we could dress the baby. I had been under the impression that the hospital staff would do this. But much to my surprise, it was not so. Elvido and I began to prepare ourselves psychologically for this task upon understanding that we would need to dress the baby. We had a tiny little diaper, a pair of socks, two different sized hats, a pair of pants, a t-shirt, and another shirt to put over that. As we waited, I offered up a few prayers for strength to go through with this as I tried not to think of what we were actually going to be doing. It was like a dream, or should I say, a terrible nightmare. And yet, I found strength in the fact that I knew what Amalia and Mario were going through was infinitely more difficult than what I would be doing in the next few moments. Finally, the man went to a refrigerator-type storage unit and pulled out a small package wrapped in shipping paper. As I began opening the package, I tried to distract my mind but continued to think about the lack of compassion involved in this whole process. After at least two layers of shipping paper, I found that the baby was wrapped in a couple layers of diapers taped together. Carefully, I untaped the diapers and came to the little baby. The body was ice cold. The face was dirty, smeared with spots of blood. There was blood and ripped skin near the feet and ankles. My wife and I had talked about taking a picture of the baby for Mario and Amalia in order to remember her in the future. Having a photo really helped heal us emotionally when we lost our little boy that died at birth after 8 months of pregnancy. I realized what I must do. I had some TP with us and proceeded to unroll a bunch and then wet it at the sink. I tried to carefully wipe the baby's face and clean it up to make it presentable for a picture. It took a number of tries since the blood had started to dry. Then I tried to pick the baby up holding it with the diapers that were still underneath its tiny little body while Elvido tried to dress her. We decided not to put on a new diaper for obvious reasons and since she already had a diaper on. We struggled with dressing the baby, putting on its pants, trying to get the tiny little feet through the ends of the pants, not wanting to touch the icy little body, but of necessity doing it. Then we put the t-shirt on and finally we struggled with the shirt, trying to get her tiny little hands through the ends of it as well, taking care not to damage the body, so tiny, so precious, so fragile. The hat was next, we chose the larger of the two caps for ease of placing it on her head. We tried to take a photo but I had no memory stick!!! Ugh... I couldn't figure out how to take a photo using only the camera's internal memory either. Oh no! The only option was to return to my house with the body in the casket and get my memory card so I could preserve the memory of this precious little child for its parents. We took the baby that was now in the casket back to my car and placed it in the trunk. We proceeded to leave the hospital grounds, but needed to "check out" first at the entry gate. This required explaining what we were doing, where we were taking the body, presenting my driver's license, and other documentation. Finally, we were approved to leave. The funny thing was that they didn't even want to look in the trunk to see what, or if, we were leaving with what we told them. Now we were racing against time. It was about 3:30 and the funeral was scheduled to be at 4:00. Of course, the traffic was terrible and it took us what seemed like forever to get to my house. On the way home I called my wife to inform her of what we needed to do. I knew my wife would be emotional at the thought of bringing this baby home and having to see it like that but, much to my surprise, she handled the situation very well and even took the pictures herself. We arrived at the church shortly before 4:00 and I gave the casket to the father. We then waited around for 10 minutes or so for the rest of the people to arrive so we could all go together to the gravesite. Earlier in the day our pastor and a few of us went to the graveyard to make arrangements and buy a plot. Of course, here they don't buy plots, they rent the plots for 6 years and then... I don't know what happens. The man showed us the gravesite and I thought all was well. Then I heard them saying that we would need to dig the grave too! Our pastor asked one of the men and one of the teenagers in our church to dig the grave which they did that afternoon before the service. As I reflect over this day, I think of the difference in cultures between Guatemala (or probably any third world country) and the USA. I can't imagine how parents, spouses, or families can handle the lengthy, in-compassionate, and complicated process of death here without the help of their church family. One man made the comment during the process of that day that Guatemala knows extensively more about its dead than it does about its criminals. Thus indicating that maybe the government of Guatemala should spend more time and resources on trying to track down criminals and less time thinking up additional requirements and red-tape for people in order to bury their dead. By the way, Guatemala has socialized medicine (i.e. "free" medicine, hospitalization, etc). I hope this isn't the future for the USA.