Making amends

The Repentant Sinner - Johann Christof Rauschner

“Good morning madam, I would like to know if you are interested in purchasing a grave at the Parque Boa Esperança”. Those were the words a saleswoman from one of Belo Horizonte’s cemeteries said on a phone call to a friend of mine.

I guess the reactions of anyone who gets this phone call in the middle of a quiet afternoon, won’t vary greatly. At first, we may philosophically think about the transiency of life, of how we should enjoy the days we may still have left here on Earth. Carpe Diem would probably be the ideal expression for our feelings.

The second probable reaction would be one of questioning: “why on earth is this lady calling me, of all people?” That’s when we abandon that philosophical mood and become really concerned. We might have been unfairly included in a black list that shows how close we are to our end, which may be directly proportional to the numbers of years we have lived so far.            

The third reaction might be the questioning of the argument presented by the woman in order to sell the tomb. Tranquility? How come? Who can you be calm after knowing you have just been included by demographic statistics in a list of potential buyers of a grave? Rather than being calm, my friend got a headache: “I’m damned! This is supposed to happen to people who are much older than I am. Now I’m in this list”, she joked.

This story reminded me of a tradition we have in our family. We do not buy tombs in advance, but we like defining what our epitaph will be. Things we did and are ashamed of or unsolved problems we might have will be written on our tombstone and taken with us to the afterlife.

We do this as a joke, something to laugh at in our family gatherings. If put into practice, it would go like this: “Here lies so-and-so. Devoted mother, faithful wife, but in 1956, she broke a tambourine on her little brother’s head”.

The choice of what is going to be written on the tombstone is made by the future deceased themselves, who normally tend to choose the most difficult issues, carrying their unsolved problems with them in their tomb, in the hope that the Saints will help them when they reach the other side.

Here lies Leticia. She leaves her best regards to all. She passed away peacefully, although in 1991 she stole her elder sister’s journal so as to blackmail her. Confession made, now whatever God has in store for me, so be it!