El Dia de los Muertos

The day of the dead is a Mexican holiday, maybe even from the Aztecs, where you joyfully celebrate the people you have lost. 

We're lucky to have so many cultures in NYC to learn from, so many celebrations. 

I miss my grandparents, other relatives and friends, a high school friend who had a heart attack and died. I have so many great memories. What a joy to remember them. 

Marigolds are the flowers for the day. I've seen parades in Corona Queens. I've stopped short of having a dead people altar (ofrendas) for myself but many photos I have are of deceased people. I have a coffee mug with the skeleton (calaveras). There are special foods. Traditional celebrations are wonderful. I like the aesthetic, the iconography. 

Diego Rivera has a mural that is quite cool. There is an opera where Frida comes back to Diego on El Dia de los Muertos.

Coco (2017) is the Disney/Pixar movie version exploring this tradition. In the movie, there's a family that has banished music because a musician husband left the family. So there's a story around the dead that controls the living. The specifics are perhaps specific, but the dead's influence on the present is universal. And then Miguel goes into the dead realm, and that's the odd part that is imaginative, and a mystery and so much more. Great songs.

Six Feet Under is also a show with an extended meditation on death. 

Everything seems to unfold into anicca, there is impermanence of memories of ancestors. How can I convey my dim memories of my great grandparents to my 7 year old daughter?

The Denial of Death is a pivotal book in my mind, and a day where you confront it a little is quite cool.

The refuge tree of inspiration is a kind of ofrenda.