11/9/2009
It was a very sad week for Holy Trinity Episcopal School. A girl in the fifth grade, Reina Melisa, died suddenly on Thursday morning. While the story has changed several times in a likely effort to protect the doctors and nurses involved, it is probable that she died from an allergic reaction to medication while being treated at a local clinic for Dengue fever. They rushed her to the hospital but were unable to save her. She was 11 years old.
The students and staff at Trinity were informed as we arrived at school on Thursday morning but the secondary school continued with classes as usual, offering time for students to ask questions and reflect but not disrupt the schedule too much. I joined Mike, Betty, and Mary Ann, the assistant principal in charge of the primary school and we walked over to the funeral home, which is literally right next door to the school, to meet the parents and give our condolences while the students had their recess.
On Friday, the students had classes for an hour and a half then made cards for the family. At 9am we went down into the auditorium for the funeral service. The fifth grade class sat at the front while the rest of the school sat at the back. As friends and family members filed in, they placed flower arrangements on the steps of the stage behind the altar so that there was a solid back drop of bright colors.
The immediate family members wheeled in the casket from next door, which was closed but had a viewing window on the top and the service began. The 5th graders read scripture in both English and Spanish and Reverend Neri spoke, followed by an older sister and an uncle of Reina. I stood at the side with some of the 10th graders and they followed along with me in the Book of Common Prayer. The most poignant part of the service for me was how every five minutes or so, one of the classes would stand up from their seats and move to the back to accommodate for people filing in late for the service. First the 9th, then the 8th, then the 7th, and so on until there were no students sitting and it was standing room only in the auditorium.
At the end of the service, there was a long caravan to the cemetery, which is about 20 minutes east of the city, outside of town. I rode out with Neri, Veronica, and Licenia, one of the custodians, and we followed the gray Dodge caravan, which serves as the funeral home’s hearse. There is no parking to speak of at the cemetery so everyone just pulled off the highway and walked the quarter mile, dodging the tractor trailers screaming by. The cemeteries in Honduras are on the more marginal land, this particular one on a hillside next to a stream. The gravestones are more horizontal than vertical and the entire grave is decorated, not just around the headstone, with plastic flowers and other trinkets.
There were close to a hundred mourners at the graveside. The service continued with more memories of Reina followed by a series of official condolences from the hospital and from the places where the parents worked. The family gathered around the casket one last time and cried together while a woman led the mourners in songs. Then the casket was lower into the ground and it was over.
I have become accustomed to seeing funeral gatherings on almost a daily basis, as Trinity is in the center of the funeral district of La Ceiba. There is Funerario San Jose next to the school, which has wakes going on almost every day. The in-town offices of the cemetery are one block south, complete with a full window front display of their selection of coffins and memorials. One block to the east is the poor mans funeral home, where you can see the owner making the coffins out of rough-hewn planks on his back porch. While death is a part of life, it is always a tragedy when a child dies. But as the sister said during the services, God has a plan for everyone and we must have faith that Reina is in a better place.
The day brought back memories of when I returned to Deerfield Academy the year after I graduated for the memorial service of a student who graduated with me and had died while away at college. I only knew Gordie as an acquaintance, but I was still glad to be there, wearing my green Class of 2004 tie, showing my support to his family and my classmates. In the same way, I never knew Reina and was only vaguely familiar with the smiling face that was on the front of the service bulletin. I felt strange being there and witnessing the people who loved her so much grieving her death when I had not even met her. Even though I was very much an outsider, I hope that being there in my white polo with the Trinity shield did a little to ease their pain and show that even although her time on this Earth was short, it meant something and she will be missed.
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