I remember when my grandfather died. I was young and it was my first close experience with death. I remember telling myself I wasn’t going to cry and then crying towards the very end of the funeral service, surrounded by family that was also crying. I remember going up to the casket and touching his hand and not knowing if that was ok and how it was really cold. I remember wanting a flower from the funeral wreath, something to take with me that would be unique to the moment, in order to not forget. I remember never talking about him again. This is how I learned that death is taboo and scary and unknown. That grief is overwhelming and no one knows how to deal with it. That this sadness is not allowed a space in our society.
And this absence is what attracted me to the ritual of Dia de Los Muertos. I love the way death is celebrated instead of ignored. Once a year, you build an altar for the people that you care about who have died. You put up their photos and bring them things that they enjoyed during life. You can cook them their favorite meal and leave them their favorite alcohol, their favorite cigarettes. Maybe a musical instrument or a book. I know I would want dance shoes if I came back to visit. I know I would want to be remembered through stories.
I have been trying to get to Michoacan for Dia de Los Muertos, where the tradition originates, since I first came to Mexico and before Coco made it cool. And this year it finally happened. I went to Morelia, the capital, and the small town of Pátzcuaro near the island Janitzio. Michoacan is a beautiful mountains state. It’s where the Monarch butterflies migrate to each year and was one of the very few areas to successfully defend itself against the Aztec empire during the 15th century.
It’s also incredibly unstable. Whenever I told anyone my plans to visit they immediately responded with some version of you’re not going alone, are you? The only things I heard about Michoacan going in is that is it incredibly poor and almost totally controlled by narcos. I’m not easily scared but enough Mexicans told me I should be that I started to get jumpy about the trip.
And as it turns out, my suspicion was right and like many parts of Mexico despite being riddled with socio-economic despair Michoacan still has a ton to offer. Morelia is famous for cinema and hosts an international film festival every year. Pátzcuaro has a hippy chic vibe and is filled to the brim with artisanal coffee shops and boutiques featuring handmade shapeless sacks to take to your next meditation retreat. You can take in the typical colonial architecture and the not so typical yácata pyramids- these ones being shorter and rounder than your average pyramid.
And I’m grateful I got to see it all for myself, despite the warnings. That I was able to learn a new way of honoring the dead, that encourages me to be less afraid of the unknown and to speak about what has happened. Being able to share my own experience and the experiences of others is a privilege that brings me closer to who I want to be and encourages me to become the kind of person I want to be remembered as.
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