Today We Celebrate Día de los Muertos

Our altares de muertos or ofrendas

Ron's parents, brother, and nephew Sam

My parents, brother, grandparents, and great-grandparents

Honoring Our Ancestors

The celebration of life and death that is embodied in Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, is a newer tradition for myself and my husband. And this ceremony is growing in its depth and meaning with each year.

Today Ron and I shared memories, told stories, held in prayer and with compassion and love generations of our ancestors. These included our parents and siblings and other family members who have died in recent years and long ago, both pictured and named and unnamed. We reflected on so much that we each hold in our hearts. There was sadness and gratitude, consciousness of strengths and struggles, and the tender awareness that all of us are or have done the best that any of us can do at any particular time in our lives. It is not easy to be human. And what an extraordinary blessing it is to be human.

And neither Ron or I would be here if it weren't for the ancestors who have come before us. It is also unlikely that we would hold the deep passions and joy and gratitude and love that we experience and share in our lives if it weren't for all that has brought us to this place where we are today — all the struggles and losses, all the precious and hard earned gifts and wisdom, and the sacred threads that link us through time with all of our ancestors. Deep bow of gratitude, wonder, and love. 🙏

And Ron and I honored Mystery and Grace and the incredible preciousness of life. And love.

I am deeply grateful for how it is that we can continue to grow and evolve and deepen throughout our lifetimes in the practices that each of us come upon and root into which bring us more fully alive while we are alive. So many gifts. And for my husband and myself, this includes honoring life and death and all of our ancestors. And all that helps us in growing more whole, more loving.

Blessed be.💗 Molly

***

When Death Comes

When death comes

like the hungry bear in autumn;

when death comes and takes

all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

— Mary Oliver