Dia de Los Muertos

Me dressed as La Catrina last Halloween

It's finally time for the Dia de Bloglandia blogger's celebration! I hope I'm getting this up in time for everyone 'round the globe to visit. Wee grandbabies and teens and chihuahuas and visiting granddogs and family Dia de Los Muertos planning all take time, time, and more time, so I'm sitting here late at night hoping my party post will be at least reasonably coherent, typos kept to the minimum. The lamp light, warm cats cuddled by my side, the soft pattering of raindrops is creating a quiet, island of reflection on a rare rainy night.....

I haven't always celebrated Dia de Los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. In fact, I didn't even know about the holiday until some time in the last.... well, I don't remember when I first heard of it. All I know is that I've celebrated it for enough years that what started out feeling like wearing somebody elses shoes now fits like an old favorite pair of slippers.

The first thing that drew my interest was discovering the odd and joyful art that is associated with the holiday - the frighteningly adorable skeletons, the bright folk colors. I also liked how the rituals and traditions embraced a lot of favorite parts of both my Catholic childhood and my adult pagan beliefs. Since I have always loved the traditions of Halloween - the candy, the scary stories, the costumes, the grinning jack-o-lanterns, I eventually came to think of Dia de Los Muertos as the perfect way to enjoy the secular activities of Halloween and carve a new and separate space and time for the more spiritual aspects of this autumn season that I yearned for but often found shoved to the side in all the busyness of having fun.

Now, that's not to say that Dia de Los Muertos isn't fun. It's bright colors and families gathering, it's hot cinnamon spiced cocoa and sugar skulls. It's decorations and candles and laughing and story telling and dumb suppers enjoyed with everyone invited, those still with us in the flesh and those with us in spirit.

As someone who has lost many beloved family members and friends, I've come to realize first hand how important it is to be able to continue to remember them in comfortable and happy ways that move past the initial grief and sadness. Relationships, as most of you probably have also discovered, are hardly over after a loved one dies. The sum of our relationship includes all the time before death and all the time since that person's passing. The period wrapped around the death is usually a time soaked in pain and grief, confusion, numbness, fear, and loss. But to remember only that stretch of our relationship is a cruel punishment for both us and for the one we love. More important is all the love and memories, laughter, perhaps conflicts and growth, that we shared with each other.

I certainly remember my loved ones more often than a single holiday a year. If the truth be told, I think of most of them each and every day. I talk with them. Some of them even talk back. I'm reminded of moments shared. But the Day of the Dead rituals allows us to be with our loved ones in a way that's more public, more concrete and acknowledged ways than our small private moments.

Think of a living friend or family member that, because of distance or busy schedules, you rarely see. Something happens, maybe a wedding, a trip, a phone call, and suddenly we find a bit of time carved out to be together. Often we leave that time spent together feeling warm and full and joyful in a way we forgot was possible. We think "How come we let so much time go by since we last spent time together?!" We tell each other that we won't let months or years go by before we get together again. Sometimes we are serious enough to make more of an effort. But probably, more typically, life gets busy, time slips by, good intentions are, well, good intentions and we end up letting long stretches of time roll out again.

Well, it's the same with our departed friends and family. Life is busy and we let time spent thinking and reflecting and laughing about old times get squeezed and snipped until those moments are more "sound bites" than they are the real stories, the heart of our memories. Having a day when everyone agrees to set aside our busy regular schedule in favor of a long, happy chat with those we miss ensures we don't miss visiting with them, remembering how much they shaped our lives, were apart of our lives, are still a part of our lives whether they've been gone a year, or ten years, or forty years.

For those of us who live in communities that don't collectively recognize Dia de Los Muertos, we often have to work to create personal or family traditions that work independently. Our family has no nearby family graves to visit or decorate, no extended family nearby living or dead, so we have focused on creating annual dumb suppers. This is where we cook and gather the foods and drink our ancestors or departed family enjoyed and, setting a plate for them at the table, invite our departed and ancestors to join us. Some years we add ritual, other years it's a simpler affair. Regardless, the conversation around the table is always full of laughter and perhaps a few teary eyes. We also set up an altar with photos, flowers, candles, symbols and whatever needs to be included, either directly at the table or on a nearby space where it can stay up awhile.

Another aspect of the holiday I appreciate is the acceptance and acknowledgement of life and death as partners. You can't have one without the other. It seems our mainstream culture tries very hard to get us to forget this. We focus on life and youth and hide aging and death and tragedy behind the scenes. And yet hiding death doesn't seem to make any of us any more comfortable with the inevitable. If anything it seems to make it more frightening and unknown.

A quirky Halloween tradition our family has embraced is Graveyard Pudding. I tried to find a photo from past years but, alas, couldn't find one. But imagine chocolate pudding covered in Oreo cookie "dirt". A few gummy worms or sometimes candy bones sprinkled on top. And stuck in each individual serving bowl, a gravestone shaped cookie with the name of each family member written across it. It's a bit disconcerting, seeing ones name on a gravestone, and yet the family looks forward to the holiday treat every year.

In fact, this year I was so busy that I let Halloween slip by without it and today William asked me when were we going to make it. He didn't care about missing Halloween (he had a football game on the night of the 31st), he didn't care about going to the pumpkin patch or carving a jack-o-lantern or picking a costume. He only missed this one seemingly unimportant part of the season. I assured him I had picked up all the ingredients and would be happy to make it and midsentence I suddenly realized that it was actually more of a Dia de Los Muertos tradition than it was a Halloween one and it would be a great addition to our dumb supper tonight.

Very exciting, after years of searching, I finally found some gravestone shaped cookie cutters this fall, so last night I made my very first homemade gravestones! Today we'll be setting up an altar, cooking up some favorite foods, making graveyard pudding, and spending time around the table. It will probably be one of the smaller celebrations as Hubby and William both have to work and Joli and Lisa I are making the most of our time together before they have to leave early tomorrow morning. Sniff. But smaller is fine. Another important thing the Day of the Dead reminds us of is how important it is to prioritize spending time together with those we love while we are still on this earth together, building all those blessed memories that make the gift of life and death worth all the work.

I know, this was a party, perhaps I should have simply offered you some pretty photos of altars and steaming mugs of chocolate instead of this wordy pondering. But it felt right, to reflect on my love of this special day. I'll probably have those altar and cocoa photos for you later though so, I hope you stop back by again soon.

Day of the Dead ACEO's I made last year.

And while I have your attention, I want to let you know I'm hosting a Magical Yule artist's swap for the upcoming winter holiday season! Please click on over to my studio blog to find out more about the creative fun. Or scroll down to the post below this one to find a link directly to the swap guidelines post.

Also, don't forget to click on the Dia de Bloglandia button in my sidebar to visit other bloggers celebrating today.