Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer

other in hell. There he found his brother in a saloon with a bottle of beer
in his hand and a woman on his lap, having a grand time.
“The good brother went back to Saint Peter and complained. ‘He’s
having a great time in hell while my life is boring, sitting on a cloud and
doing nothing,’ he said.
“‘Ahhhhhh, don’t worry about that,’ Saint Peter said. ‘The bottle has a
hole in it and the woman doesn’t.’”
Don Elijio roared. The hammock shook. Over and over he kept
repeating the last line of the joke and giggling.
I noticed some color creeping back into his cheeks. It was time to get
my loquacious friend talking again.
“Greg and I have decided to do a Primicia every month,” I told him.
“Ahhh, that’s good, daughter. The Maya Spirits are almost as lonely as I
am,” he chirped as I adjusted the castor oil pack. I rubbed his feet, which
always soothed him tremendously.
“I remember when you first came around to see me,” he told me. “My
relatives told me not to trust you. They said that your interest in me was not
good. They were wrong. Through all these years you have been my friend.
Friendship is what counts. Now there is only you to carry on my ways. You
have given me as much as I have given you.”
Tears welled up in my eyes as I leaned forward and vowed, “Papasito, I
will be with you until the last step. I will never leave you.”
I sent a message home with Angel and stayed with Don Elijio for three
more days, monitoring his condition and taking care of all his patients. I
continued to treat him with prayer, massage, and the castor oil packs.
On the afternoon of the third day he was sleeping in his hammock while
I sat on his customary stool talking to a heavy-set, middle-aged East Indian
woman who had come to consult with him.
“I am sorry,” I told her. “Don Elijio can’t see patients today. He has
been very ill and is resting now. Either I can help you or you’ll have to
come back another time.”
But the woman was insistent and kept peering behind the curtain to
where he slept.
Just as she was about to reluctantly resign herself to my services Don
Elijio came staggering out in his underwear.
“Mamasita! Mamasita! I nearly died!” he shouted, gesturing wildly. “I
was as close to dying as I ever came in my life. I got right up to the gates