We should all take comfort in knowing the Lake Chapala Society was organized by residents during the 40's who realized that they had a mutual problem: they hadn't just moved into another Tucson or Miami for a warm climate retirement. There were neither dentists nor doctors out here, although our Mexican neighbors could grab a handful of leaves or pick a flower and boil it up; we drank It, and we mostly got better. It was the fact that, sometimes, you did not get better that caused their making of the LCS. A valiant few gave themselves no title but nobly took a few years or so and found out what to do with a dead gringo. There were papers and property, heirs and relatives and no cremation. Most importantly they learned who to pay off etc.--you get the picture. Forced to organize, they called themselves "The Lake Chapala Burial Society." It took an equal amount of time before they decided it was time to drop the "B" word, since the burial was the least of it when a foreigner died down here.
When Neill James, owner of the property where the LCS minus, "B," now is, realized that IT was really going to happen to her, she signed some papers brought by some of these newly arrived experts, releasing the land after IT happened to her', to the LCS. The IT was that she was not really going to die because she had planted in her garden Mexican or other worldly herbs, plus a perennial corn that prevented extinction. I know, because I have eaten them. At the same time she recognized a hereafter, which she explained to me having to do with fish, bushes and birds. It sounded as good as any to me at the time--still does. So she seems to be taking pleasure in her "hereafter". She should be as it has never been more beautiful.
Ask at the office inside about the "B" as in burial.
