Welcomed to share in their pain

Last week we went to a neighboring valley to a village about the size of Carmen Pampa for a wake. A university student had climbed up the mountain with some others to work on obtaining a water source for his home, his new wife and child. He slipped and tumbled off of a long drop and died while being carried down the six hour walk back to his parents´ house. A truck full of mourning students bearing flowers woven into a wreath from Carmen Pampa arrived in the evening for the velorio. We entered the adobe brick home passing under the black plastic freshly nailed above the door to find Davíd´s thin wooden casket filling the front room of his parents two-room home, sitting on a wobbly table on a cracked floor with a threadbare sheet and burning candles over it.
We were all thanked "for coming to share in the family´s pain" and fed and given drinks and coca leaves for hours. Conversation was strangely normal, even for those who knew Davíd better than I, although his wife, mother, and sister were unable to maintain the usual indigenous composure and leaned on Davíd´s clearly heartbroken father for support.
The normalcy of the event was a reminder of the high threshhold for grief and suffering that these rural people are forced to maintain. Willi, who commands a powerful presence despite his tiny stature, eloquently spoke for us all to the family, and we eventually loaded back into the truck for the hushed but dusty ride back through the lightning-lit night to the university.