I have little concept of most of my ancestors. After all, they were all dead before I showed up, except for one grandmother and my parents. They might have included a really interesting bunch of people, but my sense of them has always been otherwise. I’ve heard very few tales of people who were nonconformists or exceptional individuals. And I’ve had a lifelong desire to avoid them all, which might explain why I left England for Canada, then Canada for Mexico.
So, here are all my neighbours putting out marigolds. Why does that concern me, you wonder? Because we’re coming up on the Days of the Dead, and the bright orange flowers are believed to be visible to the deceased in the dark. People put them out so the dead can find their way to the altars with offerings of sweet things and more flowers. And they’re all over town right now.
Sarcasm about my forebears aside, I’ve always been fascinated by the different notions about death and the dead that the Protestant world in which I grew up had from the place where I now live. A lot of horror movies make marginal sense here, because the dead are assumed to be hanging around anyway. In my upbringing, we feared ghosts, vampires and zombies, and our scariest movie villains weren’t alive in a conventional sense. We wanted the dead to remain inert, and preferably absent. Here, you at least invite them for dinner once a year.
This country still has a fascination with the ouch-y forms of human sacrifice once practiced from coast to coast. There used to be a theory that the Maya, at least, didn’t kill captives, but that turned out to be false. People before Columbus’ time expected to kill, and to be killed if captured. It was an honourable death, they believed, even if it was a nasty one. And there are lots of temples around whose primary purpose was for sacrificing people in order to sustain and nourish the gods with extracted hearts.
The half covert pride in this is quite palpable. Quite possibly, a person’s fifteen-times-great grandad was sacrificed for the benefit of some now-forgotten deity. Cool, right? Yeah, I guess.
I have tried with the Days of the Dead. There’s one day here for relatives and friends, and a second for lost children. So, I’ve lit candles and contemplated the memory of now-dead aunts and uncles I encountered. But I always end up thinking they were boring. The English middle classes could go to war (my uncles and great uncles did), and keep their most exciting and traumatic memories to themselves. Meanwhile, they avoided any appearance of creative originality.
Where’s the fun in that?
Thus, I always end up shrugging, blowing out the candles and going to bed. I remain convinced that if you’re dead, it’s because you don’t belong here any more. Popping back for an annual visit and to sip a glass of tequila left on an altar seems out-of-place.
Maybe, therefore, I’m a bit too like my uptight forebears. I need to drop my skepticism, and get drunk with a deceased wastrel, or at least someone who broke a few of the rules.
There was great uncle Willie, who did something bad with part of the family finances, but he did it without flair or success. They caught him, and he did time for it. Still, I suppose he’s the best option I have. Maybe I’ll buy some marigolds tomorrow, and put them out for him, with his name written on the pot.
If he doesn’t show up, or can’t get to Mexico because of the pandemic, I’ll at least have some pretty flowers to brighten the patio.
Mexed Messages 