My Mother's Ashes Will be in Huitzuco

We are a special bunch. Clonal Colony comes to mind. This type of life form appears different from different perspectives, but if you look down we all have the same roots. Aspen trees belong to this group.

My father mentioned sometime, many years ago, that he would like to be cremated and taken to his hometown of Quetzaltenango in Guatemala. Sure enough, as soon as he was ready and died a Sunday almost at dawn, my sister went to pick him up in his little grocery store. and somehow we all managed to cremate him and my two kid brothers took him to the river he had told us to. River Xilcaja. in his hometown of Xelajú, as Indians call that place. There is a famous soccer team with that name, from that town also, and they are the leaders in their league.

Some day my mother's ashes will be in San Marino, a small out of the way place near Huitzuco, the town where she lived her childhood. She spent happy times with her parents in San Marino. They took the cows to San Marino to feed during the rainy season in the Summer. My grandpa, Manuel Uriza Marbán, was of good Spanish stock, and made cheese with Central Asian origins. We are the children of milk. Our ancestors developed lactose tolerance, through some genetic change that gave them advantage over other groups that couldn't drink the milk in adult life. We are the Indo Europeans of Huitzuco.

You can listen to Luis Cariño Marbán from Huitzuco singing a corrido to Huitzuco below. I had written a few things about Luis some time ago in this blog. He is an interesting man, half American Indian, half Spanish.

When I go back to Huitzuco, I will look for the place where they put my mother's ashes.

The family decided this when she died at dawn on Sunday, in the Mexico City Military Hospital. BTW, Luis is a veteran parachuter.

The clonal colony reference has to do with the fact that nobody asked me if it was OK to cremate my mother and take it to San Marino, I am not in Mexico at this point, nevertheless I agree, and through e-mail, suggested that her remains should be taken near my grandparents also. They are going to do that.