What are the criteria for disposing of human remains?
My father died at home after a long and debilitating fight with diabetes; there wasn’t one single day when he woke that he didn’t wish he had not died overnight. My father was a son of a bitch but there was a lot of wisdom in that mean-spirited, selfish man and one of his wishes was that he should be cremated.
A lady co-worker of my mom arrived shortly after the funeral home had removed the body and she asked “where is going to be the “velorio” (wake) tonight?” My mother said that there wasn’t going to be any and this woman went into a rage: “you mean you’re not giving him a Christian burial?” My mom told her that he was going to be cremated. Her reaction was one of indignation, as if she was cheated or deprived of the opportunity to attend a funeral. That is when I had to chew her a new asshole: “In the first place, my dad was not a Christian, in the second place, I don’t know what advantages there are in holding some kind of a ceremony which includes a priest leading some prayer or an elaborate high mass at a church. I can’t justify spending thousands of dollars on a casket and a cemetery plot when his wishes were to have his remains cremated.” She left my house in a huff and never spoke to my mom again.
Rather than going into details, I can tell you that for older Cubans cremation is rather unusual. Most Cubans will have a very lavish funeral and the spectacle is truly an event to behold. The norm is to have an all night vigil…a wake of sorts if you will and everyone stays up all night, tell jokes, talk about politics and drink 100 small demi-tasse cups of Cuban coffee.
Salsa queen Celia Cruz had a fancy New York funeral
In Cuba most wakes were held in the home of the departed and rented chairs would be set up outside the home in the street and the whole portion of that block would be closed off to traffic. For the more affluent families it was common to hire “lloronas” which are women who come to the funeral and get paid to wail, sob and cry for the event.
Parroquia de San Felipe y Santiago de Bejucal
Then there is the inevitable display of affluence…the wealthier the departed the better the casket, the abundance of “coronas” (flower sprays) and if they are a very wealthy family then you could count the number of automobiles in a funeral cortege as to how influential and wealthy this family was. With the exception of the famous who usually had their funerals without cars and a crowd of people would accompany the funeral to the cemetery on foot and these oftentimes included a horse-drawn carriage, elaborate and encased in etched glass.
Since my grandfather’s estate was located on the road to the cemetery in my hometown, we would see all the processions for the dead in my town. Oftentimes you could hear the church bells in their agonizing toll. Those were the more influential ones, the church exacted a hefty fee to toll those bronze and melted gold bells. For the more prominent dead, the church would have a high mass for them.
Cuban State-manufactured floral offerings, popularly known as “crowns,” accumulate for days after burials, in Havana’s Colón Cemetery.
One of the staples of the Miami Cuban exile funeral almost always includes a flower spray in the form of a Cuban flag. The more numerous the flower sprays the more important and loved the dead person was. A false and superficial criteria if you ask me because I have known families who despised the person while alive and went on to spend a fortune in the funeral and they ordered a couple of dozen flower sprays to “acompañar al difunto y mostrarle nuestro amor” (to accompany the deceased and show our love) In other words, guilt has to be playing a role in this case as the family was probably vey mean to the person while alive and they are trying to make it up by showing off at the funeral.
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