La Catrina
La Calavera Catrina.
Oaxaca, Oaxaca, MX
How do we honor the dead?
The proposal that we can adequately do so may seem preposterous, but perhaps it isn’t too far out of reach.
After all, there is an entire holiday dedicated to doing just that in Mexico.
Yes, the ancient people of Mexico passed down a powerfully spiritual tradition that has been celebrated and commercialized by the modern world, but it was not only from them that I gained true insight for how to honor the dearly departed. A dear friend and I were speaking of death as he, too, had lost his father in the same terrible way and, yet, not the same terrible way that I had lost my father. His soft words were as equally prophetic as they were inspiring:
“The best way to honor the dead is by living fully”
I took these words with me as soon as I heard them. We do what the dead cannot do. We live life in a way we would be proud of. Taking and creating any opportunity we can to live vibrantly. To dream more wildly and chase them to fruition. To indulge and savor both the common and the extravagant.
It’s from these words that I found myself quickly booking a ticket to experience, celebrate and live Día de los Muertos in the magical Mexican city of Oaxaca. It was a tradition I had wanted to take part in for well over a decade and my time to do so had finally arrived.
This was my chance to wear my wounds on my sleeve, as a proud badge of honor marking the pain I had been through. It was a wound that said, “great love was here” and its price was more than I, or any of us, could manage at the time.
I had always wanted to honor my late father, but for 19 years, I knew not how. It is not a topic that is favorably spoken of, much less is it understood. All I knew was that I ached to celebrate, to remember, to commemorate, to do something that would connect me to this person I lost so long ago.
The ancient people of Mexico did not fear death. They viewed it as the next stage of the journey of life on earth. To help guide those who had passed through the veil of mortality, they make an altar called an ofrenda. On it are placed pictures of loved ones who have passed onward and their favorite foods and drink for sustenance. Candles are lit to guide them on their journey through the realms of the afterlife. They adorn the ofrenda with Aztec marigolds, or cempasúchil, and light candles to show los muertos the way onward.
It is on such an altar that I placed a picture of my father, my friend’s brother, another friend’s father, and two friends’ mother. Their images were placed next to Mexican abuelos and bisabuelos and people from around the world. It was a collective moment for us all to unite with one common purpose: to celebrate life and death simultaneously.
I then set out on the streets where I searched for the bare bones of death. A young girl paints my face and I don a crown mixed with the flowers of the Muertos: cempasúchil and flor de terciopelo rojo.
The crown of flowers impresses a devout sense of responsibility upon me to carefully care for them, as their essence encapsulates the delicate fragility of life.
Yet they are strong and will remain brilliant and vivacious for months to come. They live on, despite being cut from the roots that once earthed them. Their beauty is so stark and so severe that they softly smolder a golden hue that extends beyond my crown and into the space around me.
It’s the extreme contrasts that make it all so captivating. My skull face says death, but my crown says life. I see the same haunting beauty in the women all around me. I see myself in them and I see all of them within me.
We are La Catrina
There is an unspeakable, indefinable power that floats through us, being the creators of life whilst embodying Lady Death.
I feel as if I toe the line of living and dead, drifting easily between the thin veil that separates us.
If such a thing exists during this time of year.
I may have come looking for a phantom connection to my late father’s spirit, alive or dead, but I do not feel it, even if his spirit does linger. After 19 years, I am once again proven that his spirit will visit me when I least expect it, not when I choose to pursue it.
It cannot be unwritten. The dead cannot be summoned. They are their own masters.
I am instead connected to my own fragile mortality. I know not when I will be met with such a fate but I do know that in the valley between, my vow to live life will be fulfilled.
