BALTIMORE — Nearly two decades after Maynor Suazo Sandoval left Honduras seeking American prosperity, he will finally make the long-awaited trip home.

Suazo Sandoval was a month from his 39th birthday when he and five other highway workers fell to their deaths March 26 as the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed.

His return soon to Central America will allow his mother, Emerita, to lay her youngest child to rest in his native soil. People plan to meet Suazo Sandoval’s body at the airport in San Pedro Sula with a caravan of cars to accompany him to his hometown of Azacualpa, where the married father sent enough money from the U.S. to fund a kids’ soccer league and his relatives’ educations. The family expects a crowd of 4,000 people to say their goodbyes.

“It was Maynor’s wish to be buried in his land,” said his nephew, Hector Guardado Suazo, speaking in Spanish by phone from Honduras.

Suazo Sandoval is not unique among Baltimore-area immigrants who want their country of origin to be their final resting place. But repatriation can be a costly and lengthy process. And it complicates funeral arrangements for relatives, many of whom are forced — by physical separation and the need for visas and passports — to mourn in one country or the other.

Still, the pull of tradition or a desire to satisfy the deceased’s wishes motivates Maryland’s immigrant families to scrape together thousands of dollars, some selling chicken and rice at construction sites or asking for donations online.

Candi Cann, an associate professor at Baylor University who studies death, dying and grief, said for the many immigrants who come to the U.S. out of economic necessity, repatriation is a last “gift” a family can give the deceased.

“Many of them left because they felt like they had no other options,” Cann said. “Repatriation under these circumstances becomes even more important and it becomes a kind of symbol, if you will, of the love and care of the community, that their one last act for the dead is to allow them to return home.”

So far, teams combing the Patapsco River’s depths have recovered the bodies of five men, including Suazo Sandoval and Miguel Luna, whose body was found Wednesday. One worker, José Mynor López, remains missing.

While some of the workers’ families have decided to repatriate their loved ones, 35-year-old Alejandro Hernández Fuentes‘s relatives planned to bury him in the U.S.

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