Dia de Muertos

“Dia de muertos” at the Mexico-US Border in Mexicali BC Mexico border with Calexico CA US. 

My father was born in the La Seiva Road cemetery in the 1960s. I grew up with my parents reminding me on every late night visit to my grandmother's house that I should fear the living more than the dead. It is only after having moved to America that I've come to appreciate my own worldview and the traditions that influence it regarding death and the afterlife. I have only seen two funerals in operation since I've been here, and one day I remember asking my friends whether they themselves go to funerals. The answer was no, not really.

Over the two odd years of my being here, having a mother who has often found herself as lead cantor at funeral services at our church in Sangre Grande, she has sometimes had as many as three funerals in a week. Surely I would attribute this to a closer-knit society and Caribbean culture where death is something commemorated by the community. People still feel the need to pay respect to the deceased, or merely lend support to the grieving family. In America, bodies are kept at the parlor where they are stored, then eventually they may or may not do a short service of sorts, after which people go to look at the coffin in the cemetery but never see it descend into the ground.

My theory is that grieving is such a sophisticated and drawn-out process in my culture that we give time for the dead to make the transition and for the living to begin adjusting to the absence of this person who has passed away. We often have open-casket funeral viewing, the body is sometimes brought to the house of the deceased, we have bullhorns announcing the death in the community, we keep wakes every night, we have nine nights (of prayer) after the passing, and we keep a church service forty days after the death date. In America, very few (if any) of these practices exist, even within a Caribbean community like Brooklyn. In my mind, this possibly has a connection to Halloween culture and how the dead are often demonized as evil zombies in popular culture.

Also, I think that America is lost to the idea of the realms of life being connected and a shared space for the unborn, the born and the ancestors (dead). If this were the case I think the abortion debate would be less of an issue. This is surely not a Western route, but what has been interesting for me as a black Catholic is the idea of the 'communion of saints' where those who have gone before us await us in the kingdom. As for who exactly constitutes a 'saint' by the standards of the RC church and its minority of canonized non-white saints, that is another blog post. I would say that I have been shaped by both West African philosophy and Catholic theology, which are not necessarily at loggerheads with each other. What these two things surely exclude is the limiting American (western) ideology that we belong to the present living state and that only.

I dreamt my grandmother last night. She was preparing to die but wanted us to comb her hair properly with a jeweled pin in her braid before she left this world. She said that she needed to be ready for the next. Bless her soul.

and may the souls of the faithful departed though the mercy of God rest in peace. Amen.