How adopting a host country ritual helped me heal – What Dia de los Muertos taught me about loss, longing and remembering

Each year on Dia De Los Muertos we make an altar for my parents.  These altars have a number of elements; papel picado (paper bunting) decorations; photographs of the people who have died; marigolds; (the smell helps the spirits find their path back to the living for a short time), fruit, pan de muerto and foods that the person liked.  My mum: watermelon, bananas and coffee, and dad: cream crackers, whiskey and cheese. It’s a family endeavour.  Last year my son said to me ‘mum leave the whiskey alone it’s grandads and I know what you’re like.’  

I tell my husband and son stories of their lives. If I listen carefully I can hear my mum’s laughter, and my dad’s interjections. My son loves to hear about my dads sweary, and often inappropriate, sense of humor, and how my mum used to scrub my brother’s ears or let me eat chips in a bag in the garden.

The first time we made the altar I imagined them visiting. Just as my child believes Santa visits, I knew that they would come, watch me sleeping, say hello to their grandson and have a look around my new home. That for that brief moment we’d be together again, and I’d not mind my dad moaning about the heat.  That now they’d know where I live. My mum would have scrubbed something she deemed unclean, and my dad would have fiddled with something electrical and tuned in their digital radio that sits on our bookshelves.