Dia de los Muertos

Every year when Halloween decorations are taken out to be put up we all marvel at the sweet home made ones.  The ones made back when the children were little and I had time to clean out and soak baby food jars to make into candle pumpkin holders.

Back when I got all the magazines that had on every cover a way to lose weight  and a photo of something that would only make you gain weight.

Our decorations also include photographs that were glues on to plates and decorated.  Each year these are brought out and hung on our mantle.

Today is Dia de los Muertos.  A day to celebrate and pray for the dead people in our lives.  When these plates were made Eric was still alive so there is not one for him.  My father, My grandparents, The biological mother of two of my children, and a photo I had taken years ago of the Twin Towers.

That is all we really do as a family to celebrate this day.  We do not pray for or put out food for our beloved lost members of out intimate tribe.  We make no elaborate alters, except for the decorated plates.

I like the idea of celebrating the dead, and doing so over a two day period and then moving on.  It would be nice if grief did work like this.  If it could be large, and colorful and public.

Then put away.

Can we just put everything we grieve into this one day?  Grieve lost pets, lost relationships, dead careers, bad choices, and any regrets held on to?

How would a decorated paper plate look for a regret?  Do I want such a thing hanging on my mantel?  It is somewhat  hard enough that I have a photo of my dead husbands dead first wife, as she and I were not exactly the best of friends when she was alive.  I respect the photo  of her, because in her death she gave me the greatest gift, her children, which are my children.

Death is so much of a prevalent theme that even my daughter wrote one of her college essays on it.  In her essay death is named, given shape and referred to not as a depressing creature, rather one that has challenged her.  Her version of death has shaped her in to being her own force of life.

She is much wiser than I am in many ways, (of course I will deny every saying that.)  She took the deaths that befell her and embraced life.

I on the other hand have dwelled among the dead.  I am the keeper of the dead.

At least I have been.  I have been guilty of letting the dead define me.  If I was no longer a wife, then I was a widow.  Not too long ago I changed my relationship status online from "widow" to "single".  I had many congratulatory comments.

No one really knew what they were congratulating, and I suspect it was more of a solidarity from fellow single middle aged women.  A cyber, "You go girl!" type of thing.

For me it was letting go of another label in my life that just does not seem to fit me anymore.

I look at my life now, and I am so much more than a Widow.  I am me.  I am alive.  I am tired of being the keeper of the dead.  They are after all dead, let them keep to themselves.  This includes the regrets, bad choices, and just about all four of my high school years.

Tomorrow or the next day the decorations will be taken down and we will have a few short weeks until they have been replaced with other odd mixtures of pagan and christian decorations.  The plates will be replaced with stockings (hung with care naturally), and the ghouls will vanish to make room for idyllic snow villages that none of my children have actually ever witnessed.

They have witnessed death, and they have chosen life.

I have witnessed death and chose to let part of myself die.

I no longer feel that way.  I haven't in quite some time.  I have been more alive and happier in the last few months than I have been in the last eight years.

I feel alive again.

My heart does not feel empty anymore.  I have filled it with the joys of my children, my job, each sunrise I witness,  song I blast in my car, photograph I take, laugh I release.  I have filled that empty spot with life.

If I tried I am sure I could hear the faint applause of my dead and a few saying, "It's about damn time!"

I am no longer trying to hear my dead speak.  Fill my ears with the sounds of life.

Until there is a picture of me on a paper plate hanging on someones mantel, I will take my place among the living, where I belong.