At the cemetery where I ran yesterday morning, many of the graves were decorated with silk flowers in fall colors: big chrysanthemums, calla lilies, sunflowers. It is a small, well visited place, although there is a corner in the back where a few headstones are stacked, displaced by Katrina and unable to be returned to the grave they once marked. Several of the gravesites have benches, many have small statues of Mary or the Sacred Heart. Most have some flowers, a couple have a teddy bears. I passed one grave decorated for Halloween, complete with plastic black fencing around the plot, fake tombstones, cobwebs, skeletons staked like they were coming out of the ground, and lots of orange flowers. “Tasteless,” was my first thought, until I saw the Hispanic name on marker.
Ah! Now I felt like I had been invited to someone’s party. Had wine been poured out for the dead? Time to go home and make pan de muertos and remind my kids why we celebrate Halloween.
In the Shadow of the Past
2 months ago
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