December 30 - Guatalatinejo

They'd taken conventional medicine as far as it would go, but it wasn't enough. The doctors gave her a month.
Rather than spending the rest of her time waiting, she and her husband booked a trip to Peru where they would stay indefinitely in Guatalatinejo, a native American village and "healing center" in the Andes. Guatalatinejo was near Puno, the hamlet where they had first gotten to know each other more than 15 years ago as Peace Corps Volunteers. It would be their first trip to South American since then.
"Round trip," she'd said, looking at the itinerary he had booked for them. It wasn't exactly a question, but given their circumstances, round trip wasn't what she was expecting. She looked at him expectantly.
"Yeah," he smiled and shrugged. "Well, you know." What was he going to say? That he didn't feel like explaining to the travel agents why one ticket would be one way and the other one would be round trip?
"It was cheaper, actually," he said.
Before they left, their friends threw them a bon voyage party, and although there were a few tears, everyone was pretty good about following his insistence that the night not "end up in a teary, depressing mess." On the contrary, there was a lot of laughter, and lots of stories. She thanked them at the end of it, saying it was like getting to attend her own funeral. Then she laughed a bit, there was a pause, and everyone else lost it.
Nobody wanted to be the first to leave. The hugs lasted for minutes.
Two days later they were in Peru.
(As they were expecting) Guatalatinejo was a little bit touristy, and the relatively new facilities of the healing center tried a little too hard to look exotic, but overall it was charming. And it was great to be back in South America. Everything looked a little newer, but the hills, the smells, the air, and the sounds were the same.
The healing center staff were friendly. It helped that their tribal language was similar to the language they had learned (and to their surprise, not completely forgotten) during their Peace Corps days in Puno. The more they practiced with them, the more it came back.
There was locally grown fair trade coffee available, as well as and locally made handicrafts for sale at the market near the healing center. They could also buy traditional tribal bags, shirts, shawls, and jackets with the local tribe's patterns and insignia on them--clothing that they only ever saw being worn by other guests at the center or the villagers that were directly employed by the tourist industry.
But despite the manufactured authenticity, they both enjoyed Guatalatinejo, particularly the crisp, cool mornings as the fog burned off. Every morning they wrapped themselves in blankets and sipped coffee on their veranda that overlooked the deep valley. Quietly listening to the sounds of the surrounding village coming to life--sheep bleating, chickens clucking, people calling to each other in the tribal language--was a gently magnificent way to start the day.
Their days were spent with the other guests (mostly other U.S. Americans) sipping herbal teas, eating locally grown herbs and roots, following a rigorous but soothing activeness regimen, and receiving the incantations and prayers of the medicine man.
In a previous life, he might have derisively called the medicine man a witch doctor, but not now. Not when he could see how calm the medicine man's words--whatever they were--were making his wife. Although he would never let himself get to the point where he actually believed any of what was happening there might actually work, he also wasn't so cynical that he couldn't see the effect it was having on his wife. She was calm and at peace, but not in a resigned and ready to die way. She was also vibrant, happy, and vivacious, so he didn't question it.
In fact, he was loath to even acknowledge it. Sports superstitions were about as close as he ever got to religion, but he felt strongly about them, and the one that applied here was don't mess with a streak. Because that's what their time at Guatalatinejo felt like to him, one phenomenal, increasingly long (and frankly unexpected) winning streak. She felt good, they were enjoying their time together, and that was more than they could have allowed themselves to hope for going into it.
The days stretched into weeks and they quickly found a rhythm: quiet mornings together, days with the staff and other guests at the healing center, and evenings together, sometimes in their cottage and sometimes at Guatalatinejo's Cultural Center. Teenage girls dressed in ceremonial costumes doing traditional dances to the accompaniment of pan flutes, and then texted from the backs of their boyfriends' motorcycles afterwards.
They also took a couple of trips to Puno and visited their old host families and friends from their Peace Corps days. They didn't mention her disease and nobody suspected anything was wrong.
A month passed. Then six weeks. He Skyped his boss from their cottage and told her he needed more time. His boss teased him about it, saying the woman they hired as his temporary replacement was doing his job better than he could.
"Take as much time as you need. As far as I'm concerned you guys don't ever have to come back."
As soon as the words came out of her mouth, she regretted them, but he didn't say anything. He just thanked her and told her he'd be in touch.
Another couple of weeks passed and every day she seemed to be doing better. They went on longer and longer walks. They danced. They laughed. Maybe it was the air. Maybe it was the diet, the exercise, the herbs and the roots. Maybe it was the words of the medicine man. Maybe it was the pan flutes. He didn't know and he didn't care. He was just happy that it was working, whatever it was.
Two weeks after he called his boss, they celebrated their 12th wedding anniversary in Guatalatinejo. Neither of them said so out loud, but both of them couldn't believe she had not only held on that long, but had managed to do so looking better than she had when they had arrived. After dinner they sat on their veranda for hours looking at the stars and listening to the distant sounds of the pan flutes at the Cultural Center.
A week later, she died in her sleep.
There would be a wake for her when he got back to the States, but they had already made arrangements for her to be cremated in Peru. She was adamant about not having her last act on the planet be "getting flown thousands of miles just so I can take up a bunch of space I don't need."
He spread her ashes on the outskirts of Puno and then made his way back home.