Being
scared of goblins and ghoulies lost its sway when I got old enough to lose
people that I loved. The dead just aren’t scary in the same way anymore. In
fact, I’d welcome a visit from many of them.
That’s
what Day of the Dead is about.
There is a belief that on this day the veil
separating this world and the next is thinner and so it’s a time we can be
closer to those that we love who are dead.
Day
of the Dead celebration centers on rituals for remembering loved ones. We can
visit them in our imagination or feel their presence. It can mean prayer or
conversation, writing a letter or looking at old photos.
The tradition that I
use includes making an ofrenda, or altar, something as simple as putting photos
and candles on the coffee table and taking time to talk about these loved ones and
remember them. We also have spicy hot chocolate as a symbol of the sweet and
bitter separation from those we love.
A
ritual is a way of ordering life. Whether Purim or Advent, hearing Mass or
saying Kaddish, small ceremonies help us sort and reframe our memories.
When
someone dies the relationship doesn’t stop, it’s renegotiated, literally
re-conceived.
No,
this isn’t a very American idea. Culturally our preferences are for efficiency
and effectiveness; even with grief we use words like closure and process.
I remember my
frustration when I was grieving the loss of my brothers and sisters and my
truly well-intentioned friends would suggest I move along in my process and they
quoted (actually, misquoted) Elizabeth Kubler-Ross.
The simplified version of
her theory lists stages: Denial--Bargaining--Anger--Depression, and Acceptance.
But it’s false to
create that expectation of five discrete steps. That listing implies order, and
that a person can move from point A to point B and be done. That makes grief into
an emotional Monopoly game where you go around the board, collect points and
get to a distinct and certain end.
This
false notion of linearity is apparent when we hear people judge someone who is
grieving, “Oh, she missed the anger stage”, or “He hasn’t reached acceptance
yet.”
I
always thought that “losing a loved one” was a euphemism used by people who
were afraid to say the words dead or died, but after losing my brother Larry
I know that lost is the perfect word to describe that feeling of something
just out of reach, still here, but also gone.
Though
he died years ago my feeling about my brother is that I have misplaced him; I
have that sensation of knowing that my book or that letter I was just reading,
are around here somewhere…if I could just remember where I left him.
I
think this is why we can be so hard on the grieving, and why we want them to go
through those stages and be done with it. We love closure and things that are
sealed and settled.
But death and grief, for all their seeming finality, are
not as final as we would like.
So tonight, I’ll make
cocoa and light candles; we’ll take family pictures into the living room and tell
stories. And we’ll laugh.
The
root of the word grieve is heavy. We carry our dead as a
cherished burden.
Death
may end a life but not a relationship. Who would want to close the door on
that?
