So much has happened since I last wrote a column back in April. There's so much to write about and say, but I've decided to write about the dead. Don't consider this a morbid column. After all it is appropriate to write of the dead given the lives lost in the past few weeks, plus it's the season for D°a de los Muertos, a celebration observed by Mexican-Americans and others in Latin America.
D°a de los Muertos, literally translated as the Day of the Dead, is closely related to Halloween and the Catholic holidays of "All Souls Day" and "All Saints Day." It is a time for remembering the dead. Celebrations in Mexico are more elaborate than in Northern New Mexico, where we just simply lit candles for loved ones that passed on before us then recited the rosary on their behalf.
I was once told that Mexican-Americans were not afraid of death, and many here spent a lot of time talking about and thinking of death. I'm not sure if it's true, but I do know that as children we weren't sheltered from death.
I remember attending my first funeral around age four. I was not traumatized by the experience; instead it helped me understand where my godmother was going. My fairly healthy grandmother talked about her impending death for many years before she passed on.
I was taught, early in life, that at death, a person's spirit and soul left the body and journeyed to the after life. Stories of heaven, purgatory and hell left me hoping that my own particular journey would end in heaven.
I grew up hearing stories of how the recently departed would give el aviso, or the notice, soon after dying. This is where someone who recently died would leave signs that her/his spirit had journeyed near relatives on the way to the other world.
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I heard stories like the one where my aunt woke up by the sound of someone walking into the hospital room where she had dozed off only to find that her sister had lost her battle of cancer. She believed that she heard my aunt's spirit leave her body.
There's the story of how my grandmother's parakeet escaped its cage and flew straight to my grandmother in a back room. It happened around the time my cousin died in a freak accident. My grandmother believed that my cousin's spirit had set the bird free, just as his spirit had been freed.
There are more stories - too many for this column.
These stories aren't about ghosts, goblins and mummies that we hear about in American pop culture during Halloween. They aren't phenomena to be investigated by "X-Files" detectives.
I suspect they are more about the hope of life after death so that we do not fear dying. All the stories left us feeling better about the deaths of loved ones, by somehow believing their message confirmed the after-life.
I'm sure the lessons I learned about death and dying must have originated at a time where mortality rates were high due to poverty rates and lack of medical care. We mixed indigenous beliefs and those taught to us by the Catholic Church. These beliefs were then passed on from generation to generation.
Except now it's harder to believe these stories because of the advancement of science and too many people have capitalized on their connection to "spirits" through their 1-900 phone numbers.
I think we as Americans all faced our mortality on Sept. 11, and it's affected all of us in different ways based on our beliefs. I suspect that many D°a de los Muertos alters will have candles lit for those that died in New York, Washington, D.C., and those dying in Afghanistan.
by Laura E. Valdez
Daily Lobo Columnist
