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Chapter Seven Transformation For those with few economic resources in Cuenca, the municipal cemetery is the only place to bury the dead. Although the Catholic Church now officially accepts cremation under some circumstances, the long church history of banning cremation, combined with its continued ambivalence towards the procedure, has made Ecuadorians , in general, loathe to cremate the recently deceased. Burial, though expensive, remains the preferred option. The cemetery in Cuenca is on the outer fringes of the central historical district and its gated landscape mirrors that of the rest of the city. There is a section with some very well-tended marble crypts surrounded by manicured ornamental greenery, which is where Cuenca’s wealthier citizens are buried. The rest of the cemetery, however, appears disorganized and overdeveloped. No doubt once rather elegant, most of the cemetery now looks chaotic and run-down. Multistory, white-washed concrete tombs dominate the landscape , with burial chambers placed one on top of the other, four and five layers high. As the city has grown, the cemetery has expanded in the only direction it could: up. Because of increasing pressure for space, several years ago the city imposed new rules on the internment of bodies in the vaults. For a reasonable fee, bodies can remain in full-sized chambers for up to five years. After five years and without exceptions, the body must be exhumed, with the remains disarticulated and placed in a smaller niche or cremated. Family members consider it their duty to be present when their loved one’s vault is opened and to handle the remains themselves. No one wants to hire the kind of person who does this kind of thing for a living. Stories abound in Cuenca about families encountering surprisingly well preserved bodies in the tombs and the tools and techniques required to separate the bones from still-intact tissue. As they approached the fifth anniversary of Cecilia’s death, Rosa and her 122 | Living with Lupus children began to discuss how they would handle the pending disinternment of her remains. Rosa’s children expressed some trepidation to me about the process itself, and there was some disagreement about what should be done with the remains. Rosa wanted nothing but “the best” for Cecilia, and she had asked her adult children to contribute to the purchase of a permanent niche for the bones, at a cost of nearly $2,000. Alejandra, the most vocal on this issue and often the most practical thinker in the family, thought this was an unnecessary expense and that the best thing to do was to cremate the remains for a few hundred dollars. Rosa and Alejandra were at odds with one another over Alejandra’s continued refusal to contribute to what she thought was an unnecessary expense. The children all agreed, however, that Rosa should not be present when the vault was opened; she should not have to smell the decomposed remains of her “angel,” touch her once-pristine white burial dress, or watch as they clumsily struggled to disarticulate the bones for removal from the vault. Rosa actively grieved for Cecilia for years, and she has just started to emerge from her mourning. Her children feared that the stress induced by this gruesome task, and the memories it would undoubtedly bring flooding back, would reverse the emotional progress she had made. Cecilia was by all accounts a delightful young girl. The youngest child for the first five years of her life, she experienced the liberty of affection that Ecuadorian parents and siblings bestow primarily on the youngest child. Moreover , she was both her elder sister’s and then younger brother’s playmate growing up, and her childhood was long and reasonably carefree. In comparison to her older siblings, Cecilia’s life was, like most younger siblings, considerably easier, as she had to fight fewer battles with her parents. The family was significantly more financially secure by the time Cecilia was in school, she had few responsibilities to care for younger siblings, and her older siblings had already reworked many of their parents’ more conservative attitudes and values. Whereas Alejandra grew up when the family was very poor, had child care responsibilities from the time she was seven years old, had to plead to be allowed to visit friends or attend a party in high school, and struggled to convince her mother to let her attend the university, Cecilia had no such concerns . As a younger sibling she had few familial responsibilities, she...

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