The Dead Souls Arrive

This was a headline on the Saturday noon news. The day of the dead (November 2nd) has brought a great festival to all the cemeteries of Santa Cruz this weekend. Some, like my friends Irene and Idonlina, have traveled to their home towns to velar (to accompany) their loved ones who have passed on.
According to the teacher who teaches the sewing classes at our house, it’s also a dangerous time of the year, because people tend to die around that time. Last week she had the flu and she said her mom got especially worried and began lighting candles and praying for her.
There must be some kind of truth to this theory. On Sunday morning (the day of the dead) 4 people were buried in the cemetery beside our house, among them a neighbor of ours. I never actually met the woman, she was 93 and apparently never came out of her room. Both her daughter and her granddaughter participate in the sewing class, so we participated in the mass and the burial. This being the second time I’ve participated in a burial, I know that like many things in Bolivia, it involves sitting and waiting. As I sit I think about that moment when life as I know it will be no more, or even harder, of the time I may very well have to live whenever my own mama dies or my husband, or my friends, that space in time when your insides ache with memories.
On Sunday I took a stroll through our cemetery and found a hundred or so families, united. Depending where they come from, some have simple rice bread or empanadas, while others have huge spreads of doll-shaped breads, fruits or dishes of home-cooked meals. Some families had a quiet stillness about them. Only a few, like the 4 families whose loved ones so recently passed away, were actually crying.
I stopped by to chat with a friend, whose sister immediately put a glass of chicha (a traditional corn drink) and an empanada in my hand. “Oh yeah, he told me, “you just missed the band, it came over and we were dancing for awhile”. I looked over and sure enough there was a five-piece brass band making its way through the crowds of people. This same type of band often accompanies a funeral procession here.
This day is something I admire so much about this culture. When in North America do we ever take time away from our routines to think about those we have lost? We have one week of mourning (if that) and then all the rest of the grieving process is an individual one. I long for a space like this one to tend to those memories of people who have moved on from this world; a place to cry, a place to dance, a place to eat, and a place to share with others.