Day of the Dead

Nelson Mandela died yesterday. Here is a thing: nowadays, when I read that someone has died, I am noticing that I react with almost a comfortable sense of kinship. Not kinship with the mourners, but with the person who died. As if the dead person and I, we went to the same school: we’ve got something humdrum and hometownish in common. And I don’t feel that folks are plain gone the way I used to. There is still something so un-gone about Val that I’ve been feeling less distant from the dead lately. They are un-gone too. With her. Not simply erased but in a with-Val place (or state), even if that’s merely molecular. (Miraculously molecular?) So when I read about Mandela, I felt curious for him, and calm; it doesn’t seem like he can have gone very far. It’s just a single step across that doorsill. I never felt this way, before. Death didn’t used to feel like a familiar acquaintance. It wasn’t an enemy, it was merely a stranger; but now it’s practically a cozy old sweatshirt.

This may change, of course. And the particular deaths I accompanied this year were of an un-sudden type, giving me time to walk up to the doorway and observe some local landmarks; death may still stroll up and punch me one day the way I’ve seen it do for others. But this is where I am right now.

At the beginning of November I suddenly realized I wanted to make a Day of the Dead ofrenda (altar). I’ve never done that before either. But I wanted to hang out with Val, and to do that I kind of needed to hang out with death, and here was this bridging tradition to help me do it. Mexico is rife with imagery making light of death, making friends with it, counting coup (as Val would say) by running up and ringing death’s doorbell. I’ve never been a big skeletonophile, but over the years I’ve collected some Día de los Muertos bits and bones. While Val was dying I wanted nothing to do with death or its imagery, skulls-wearing-sunhats included. But now that she has died, I’ve begun feeling quite friendly toward all those skeleton mermaids and grinning sugar skulls.

So on November 2 I took the winged-cat painting off the wall and I put up an ofrenda instead. I hung up garlands and photos and tin art, hammering in tacks with reckless abandon. It felt good. It felt companionable. It felt like taking a static space and making life happen. I thought about Val, what made her laugh, what she liked to eat, who she loved. I filled up her battered red water bottle and set it next to her ashes in their beautiful box. I treasure-hunted around the house for just the right tokens of remembrance; it felt like writing a poem — a story, distilled — and it felt like a conversation.

I included some Mexican things for the right flavor (and because we traveled in Mexico together). The orange embroidery depicts the villagers of Tzintzuntzan bringing food and flowers to the graves of their loved ones in communal mourning and celebration.

One year on a November Sunday in Oaxaca, my mom, sister and I followed revelers to a walled graveyard adjoining a church. Everybody was dressed up, chatting and laughing with neighbors, crying a little, telling stories, eating great-smelling food. There was a priest saying a blessing in one corner and a raucous brass band in another. A man came by selling popcorn. There were marigolds and flowers everywhere.

Here are the items I decided on. They all have meaning. A few more things came and went over the course of the month. One day I was at Trader Joe’s and it made me smile to pick up some of Val’s favorite dried mango for her.

The huckleberry jam is an oldie — what we called “heritage jam,” the ones we kept too long out of nostalgia — labeled in her mom’s handwriting.

Betty’s rhinestone pin keeps Val company.

Captain Kirk is sitting on Miles’ watermelon pickles.

And of course, Tuley goes where Val goes, even as she stays where I stay.

I took the ofrenda down today. I carried all the pieces back to their homes in the house, and I set the begonia back on its table. I’m not putting the winged cat back, though. She’s found a spot above the pineapple cupboard. Something new will happen in that space. I look forward to putting the ofrenda back up next year, with tokens of remembrance for my grandparents and Val and Betty and anyone else I lose. I look forward to visiting with my people again.