Preparing for Day of the Dead

 This week I’ll be celebrating Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead.  It’s not a holiday I grew up with but one I’ve borrowed from the Southwest and Mexico.

And it’s become one of my favorite holidays –in part because it’s a good spiritual counterpart to Halloween. Except for the candy, October 31^st doesn’t leave much for grownups.

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?

Stay in Your Lane

“Stay in Your Lane.” I’ve been saying that to myself a lot recently. It’s a great mantra and a reminder, and it comes with an easy visual.

We know, as drivers, that it’s dangerous to weave back and forth lane to lane, and even more dangerous to drift into an oncoming lane. It’s also true—though maybe not quite as life-threatening, that it’s dangerous to drift into someone else’s lane—at work, at home, in friendships and in romantic relationships.

Staying in your own lane is a combination of boundaries and discernment: What is my business? What is not my business? It’s not always clear. But—continuing the metaphor—that’s what the broken line on the highway is for.

A couple things can help us stay in our lane. One is watching for the red flags.

One tool is listening carefully to what you are saying, especially how you preface any comments.

If you hear yourself saying, “It may not be my business, but…” You are correct. Stop right there and get back in your lane. Ditto, for “I’ve never been (a parent, married, seriously ill, faced with infidelity, a boss, laid off…etc.) but I know that I would….(Insert unsubstantiated advice here.)”  No, you wouldn’t. And, you have no idea so cruise back to your own lane. 

Anytime we say things like, “If my husband ever..” or  “If my kid ever…” we’re blowing hot air. We might fantasize about what we’d do, but in reality there are so many ways to live thru hard things that none of us actually knows what we’d do. Turn that wheel.

Another red flag to tell you that you are drifting is to pay attention to your body. Is your heart racing, breathing accelerating, temperature rising, voice raising? You have left your lane and what you say next is 99% most likely to be a mistake or an over-reaction. Gently bring your lips together and take a seat, get a glass of water. Wait a minute or 30. 

We almost never regret what we did not say. If it turns out that you have had a related experience (You directly, not your sister-in-law) then maybe share that privately, one-on-one. 

A good friend of mine likes to remind me: “Diane, if the other person did not specifically say, “Diane, I want your advice”, then you have not been asked for your advice so don’t offer any. At all.”

Most days, I count myself good if I feel myself drifting out of my lane and pull back just in time. 

Letting Go--Just Throw the Ball

Letting Go is a topic I can never hear about enough. I love it when it’s the topic at meetings, and I really love it when people talk about how they let go—what exactly they do that helps them. 

Letting go is probably the answer to 99% of my questions. (What should I do in my relationship? Let go. What should I do about that cranky relative? Let go. What about the future I am worried about? Yes, let go of that too.

But still, and often, just as in my newcomer days, I can sigh and say, “But how?” and I try to keep the whiney tone out of my voice.

So, I love the advice on letting go from the amazing Melody Beatty. Beatty is a recovering woman, recovery writer, and a recovery role model. I highly recommend her books especially the day meditation book called, “The Language of Letting Go.” My first sponsor gave me that book in 1983 and I still read from that dog-eared, underlined, tear-stained copy every day. 

So here is her advice on how to let go:

*If you are holding onto a worry or a problem or a person—think of that as holding onto a baseball.

* If you have tried to solve a problem three times (and worry doesn’t count) then stop yourself. Let go. Throw the ball.

*If someone asks you for advice, you give them the advice one time. Then throw the ball to them. Let go. Say nothing more.

*If a person has not asked for your advice, or if you offered some advice and the answer was “No thanks,” there is nothing to throw. Let go. The ball is not in your hands.

It might be helpful—if you are really struggling with an issue or a person—to get a small ball to hold, use a ballpoint pen to write the issue you’re struggling with on that ball, and then let it fly. Throw that ball off a cliff, into a river, roll it down a hill away from you, and say out loud, “I am letting go of….and name it.”

That’s what letting go looks like. Let it go.

***

More on life in long-term recovery--see "Out of the Woods" published by Central Recovery Press.

On the Shore--The Glorious Debris

 

“Every one of us

 is called upon, probably many

 times, to start a new life.

A frightening diagnosis, a

marriage, a move, loss of a job…

And onward full tilt we go,

pitched and wrecked and absurdly

resolute, driven in spite of

everything to make good on a

new shore. To be hopeful, to

embrace one possibility after

another—that surely is the basic

instinct…..Crying out: High tide!

Time to move out into the

glorious debris. Time to take

this life for what it is.”

--Barbara Kingsolver, from High Tide in Tucson

Father's Day Time

One of the central attractions in the city of Prague is the clock tower in the main square. There is a certain irony that vacationers, supposedly freed from clock watching, are drawn to this tower clock.

They arrive five minutes before each hour to stare upward at the moving hands and the parade of carved wooden puppets that mark each changing hour. Tours guides offer stern warnings that the area near the tower is notorious for petty crime. While tourists are transfixed by the clock and its puppets, pickpockets help themselves to money, passports and yes, watches.

The tradition of village clock towers evolved from the practice of having a man stand guard to keep watch and periodically ring a bell to mark the hour. The name of that profession is the origin of the watch we now wear on our wrist. 

Timepieces gradually moved from the public clocks of the middle ages, to clocks inside the home, to pocket watches, to ones now strapped on our arm, getting closer to us all the time. While convenience has advantages, we no longer enjoy the communal reminder of passing time.

 

Time is an important topic for Father’s Day. This week’s newspaper ads show this deep connection.

From Timex to Rolex, wristwatches are the number one gift for Dad. It may be the perfect gift too. Fatherhood is a short season and it flies by.

My father died when he was 56 and I was 18. His death was sudden and unexpected. It wasn’t until I crossed the 50 threshold that I understood that my father had died young. I knew, of course, that I was young when he died, but now I understand that he was young too.

Time was an important part of my father’s life. He was an industrial engineer, a “time and motion study man”. His work was about efficiency and calculation.  He carried a clipboard and wore an elegant gold Hamilton watch.  

Whether due to nature or nurture, I too have an overly developed sense of time. I multi-task, write daily to-do lists, and I lust after organizing systems. But I also resist being tethered to time. Maybe it’s because I watched my father save so much time, which he never got a chance to use, that I have a love/hate relationship with “time management”.

My own calendar shocks people. It’s an oversized month-at-a-glance book in which I track tasks by scribbling through the borders and across the lines intended to demarcate the days. Each month’s page becomes an abstract work of scribbles and swirls and then it’s torn away. I don’t look back.

Death isn’t the only way that dads go missing from their kid’s lives. Divorce or drinking can do it too, but most often it’s work. That’s not new. Fathers of the 1950’s didn’t come to school plays or Girl Scout ceremonies; Mom went to those things and told Dad about it at dinner.

Are today’s Dads wiser? It seems so. Last year fathers reported spending four hours a day with their kids, compared with just 2.7 hours in 1965. But I wonder, are those hours together real leisure and pleasure or are we multi-tasking the homework and the errands with the quality time?

It’s a cliché to say how fast childhood goes and how fast fatherhood disappears too, but it’s true.

With our lists and calendars-- and even our watches—we can pick our own pockets. In trying to better organize them our lives can be stolen away.

Next week summer begins. Will the livin’ be easy? Or will we tick it off and time it out? Fathers, keep watch. Just look at the time.

***

For more on families and recovery you'll want to read: