Marigolds and Meditations
Last year was a monumental year during which I experienced Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) as I never had before; because last year I lost my mother to lung cancer in January of ‘06. I remember distinctly the altars of remembrance and the wells of memory on which I placed a poem for her and into which I released memories of those passed; and the marigolds, symbolic of passing from life to death, were golden as the time in-between when those passed have not yet left the living and their essences are lingering so that on this special day, the living may once again dance with the loved one (if only in memory and mind rather than the flesh). But there were a couple very mystical and mysterious aspects to my experience last year; aspects that I don’t dare disregard as insignificant, for if I did, what then should be signified?
I visited during that time a Buddhist meditation ceremony that was intertwining aspects of Dia de los Muertos for a union of cultural customs of respect. And there were moments when I couldn't accept it, the experience of the center. When I first walked in, I wanted almost to turn and run. It was too quiet and too strange: a small group of people whom I didn't know, a panicked feeling that usually comes when I feel I have to make small talk with strangers; but there was food and drink (chocolate and spice) being shared and an altar on which one could leave the name of a loved one now passed. I left a poem I had written.
Then there was a Buddhist prayer ceremony for the dead. When I first walked into the prayer room, I had a very strong reaction against where I was. I wished I had known more what I was walking into first (though sometimes it is the unknown that leaves us with the greatest sense of meaning once passed).
Again I felt the urge to run. I felt unsettled, but I finally did settle down onto a red cushion facing an altar, and a woman began to talk. In the beginning I felt cynicism, but as she began to talk of life and death and the connection of the two, her words made sense; and as she began to tell us to breathe in the death-ashes of the one who had passed and breathe out a good memory, and through doing so release the struggle of the body from the spirit, and when everyone in the room began breathing quietly, simultaneously, and as she lead us through this meditation, my mind and body and soul began to relax. She hit a gong and it resounded for several minutes and I felt literally transported away, like I was following that tone and it was leading me outside the structure of the day-to-day. Often, my mind would break from the meditation, or I would feel a sort of rejection toward it; and I couldn't chant the words of the poem because it just felt too foreign to me and too cult-like, yet I knew by not doing so I was also missing something — I was actively giving up an experience. But then there were times when I would look at the rocking back of the woman with the painted face in front of me, with her staff and black rose beside her, and I was drawn back into this state of calm. And when I felt the pressure of time on me again, I would have a sudden realization that the people in this room had attained a state in which they were, if anything, at least communing very strongly with the memory of a loved one; and the insight humbled me and allowed me to let my impatience go; and to be, if anything at all, at least respectful to the expressions of the people in that room.
At one point the people began chanting a name/phrase in unison and it started to take on a musical singing-quality and after a very long time, without much indication from any one person, it slowed to a simultaneous stop. I did not expect what happened to have occurred, when I walked into that room. I came in with doubt, distrust, suspicion and a sort of superior and disregarding consciousness. But I left having felt something I have never before felt, and I left wanting to feel that again: respect, a quietness of my soul, an easiness, an acceptance.
As those I was with and I left the ceremony to drive out to the San Fernando cemetery, past the Guadalupe Cultural Center and past Ray's Puffy Tacos, we gathered some marigolds from a basket by the door, flowers said to attract the souls of the dead. But the cemetery was closed. And this is when the second mystery of the night I felt.
After picking up my own car, in which I drove to La Tuna to meet with the others and continue our harmonious communions and reflections, I sat for a moment alone in silent concentration. The car was dark and the streetlamp above illuminated the gravel outside. I had stuck some marigolds in the bun I had twirled at the nape of my neck. But just before heading off, I felt a prickling of my flesh and I felt a hand swipe the marigolds out of the bun. In my mind, I saw a bone hand. And I knew, mi Madre had come. Perhaps she meant only to reach out and grasp, but the marigolds were knocked out. And I felt momentarily ashamed that perhaps I had shown disrespect by decorating myself with the flowers of the dead. So, I placed them beneath the front windshield and ventured off to join with the living when I was sure that which had come had again left.
At La Tuna, we sat before the warmth of a fire that was twirling its flames in a large concrete bowl on the patio. I threw another copy of the poem into this fire, watching it burn. And Eric, the fellow who had set up the altar to his grandmother at the center and who had brought together the two separate but similar homages to the dead, threw juniper into the fire and explained to us that the marigolds were also symbolic of the sun, and that the sun was the light and passage in which the dead and undead were able to commune.
And even though Dia de los Muertos was not inherently part of my culture, I felt a part of it that night. And I realized that there are many cultures with many customs that celebrate and recognize the significance of their dead in ways much more fulfilling than anything I had ever felt. So, perhaps this year too, I will leave a poem or burn a name for someone I have loved who has passed away; and join the living in memory and celebration and respect of our dead.
---Nicole Moore
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