THE conqueror worm,
the bleak and blackness of night, the damp soil, clinging onto one’s garments,
oppression of the lungs, the embrace of the narrow coffin, the body now
entombed for evermore. The lack of air,
fumes, the grass above one’s head, and above that a moon, and sun and stars,
galaxies, the universe, you are in a new world, beyond. Your friends are at
home sleeping, drinking, laughing, all informed of your death, yet not your
fate; that they are uninformed of.
You
are buried alive, in a hopeless position. Appalling it may be, an intolerable
horror, an agonizing dream, as nothing half so scornful, but it is real, and
somehow you must tolerate the burden of that reality.
Now
I will tell you a true story of a resident and friend of mine, from
Huancayo, Peru, high up in the Peruvian Andes, where folks still do things the
old fashion way, to include burials. Leoncio, originally from a small village
called San Jeronimo de Tunan, who had moved to the inner-city of Huancayo (within the
Mantaro Valley region) no one knowingly knowing of his disease catalepsy (often times
coupled with epilepsy and schizophrenia, characterized by lack of response and
external stimuli and by muscular rigidity), no one alive that is, his age being 68-years old,
and having no family to speak of, a few friends, unknowing of the mysterious
disease he had. Although I did, but I was far-off during his so called departure
from this earth, in Patagonia.
This
disease of course is of profound interest especially for its fate, or has been
in the past. The patient or victim, lies for a day or longer in a state of
exaggerated lifelessness. He is senseless, motionless, the heart’s pulsation is
faint at best, yet some places of blood warmth remain. His coloration changes
to his body, even to his lips, a vacillating action takes place in the lungs.
He is in a trace like mode for weeks if not months. Often times in isolated
areas that are still with the old customs, the prognoses is ‘absolute death’;
and for such communities, death is death, and there is no double checking into
records, that might or might not be, and for old Leoncio, there were no medical
records, he cured all his aches and pains with old remedies, the old way. And
he got buried the old way. And the only way anyone other than myself would have
known of his catalepsy, would have been by consequent suspicion, and above all
the lack of decay, the latter being overlooked.
Thus, he was consigned alive to his tomb.
I can
say in certainty, he fell into a swoon, a blackout, without pain, unable to
stir. Perhaps even to think for a while, but with a dull and dim consciousness
eventually.
Leoncio, also being an alcoholic, remained in a stupor, perhaps thinking
he was in a nightmare, until he awoke out of this stupor, into reality, and
found himself in a new crisis. Smitten to his surroundings, he must had been
sick and numb, chilly and dizzy from the hangover. Yet now in his tomb, black
and silent, his world in total annihilation, his universe gone.
He
awake as out of a seizure, and I know of that experience, for I have lived it,
my soul reaching out for perception of what is going on? Slowly coming back to the light that was
turned off; coming back out of a trance, trying to get in touch with possession
of my senses. Thus, his stage was even deeper, his bewilderment and perplexity
deeper, for he remained in absolute abeyance.
. . .
His death haunted me day and night, thinking it was
a premature burial. Thus, I had the city officials reopen the coffin, grim and
darkness overspread our faces, I shook and quivered, as did the officials,
shuttered to reflection that they had buried him alive, did we send him into
the world of phantasms, I contemplated, then I heard a gibbering voce a whisper
that came from the corpses’ lips, they moved, “Alive,” was the one word, it
said over and over, then died out. My teeth chattered, here was a voice that grasped
me by the wrist—figuratively speaking, but had I come too late?
Out of
the radiance of decay, he had been buried ten-days, his body sad, in solemn
slumber with the worms. A pitiful sight. In fact I no longer trusted myself,
was he dead, or still alive? The doctor at hand reassured me by a solemn oath,
he was dead. And the coffin was closed.
#5066/ 2-11-2016