The air was heavy and hot as I walked up a long path toward the Mexican cemetery, November 1st, Dia de Los Muertos. I passed vendors selling enormous bouquets of flowers—roses of red, white, and yellow, cockscombs in vivid, velvety reds and purples. And everywhere, lush bunches of marigolds, their pungent smell sometimes overwhelming everything else.
As I approached the gates of the cemetery with the two bouquets I had purchased, a priest in rich purple silk vestments trimmed in gold was just finishing Mass. The altar was elevated in the middle of the graves, surrounded by six altar boys in black and white, one of whom dangled the chained incense holder back and forth, the old scent wafting through the air.
When the last hymn ended, the energy shifted in the cemetery. Families began to return to the graves of their loved ones. Picnic food was unpacked, bottles of Coca-Cola were distributed. Music played and there was laughter as squealing little ones ran between the gravestones, often chased by a parent.
At some of the graves, the paint was out; one family was painting the white picket fence surrounding a grave which had to be that of a child. One man began to sandpaper the black steel spindles of the wrought iron fence surrounding four family graves. Family members lovingly arranged bouquets of flowers and sometimes candles around the edges of the graves.
I wandered over to the Expat section of the cemetery which reflected a stark difference; these graves were bleak, bare dirt, few flowers, and there were no families around them. I used the flowers I had purchased to mark these graves, leaving a flower on each one, reading their name and saying it aloud. For that day, I became their community.
Living with death. Memento Mori. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the meaning of Memento Mori is “Look behind. Remember thou art mortal. Remember you must die!” In medieval times, there were concrete and visible examples of Memento Mori: paintings rich with symbolism of death called “Vanitas” (“Vanity of Vanities”) meant to reflect the finitude of humans. These included items such as skulls, hourglasses, candles and dying flowers. There were dances as a reminder of death to come, relics such as locks of hair. These symbols were accepted and even embraced; death in its symbolism was integrated into life.
As I looked over the cemetery, all the humanity communing with the graves, the headstones, I was reminded of what Dr. Dugdale notes in her remarkable book, The Lost Art of Dying – Reviving Forgotten Wisdom, about the importance of community in the context of dying. The drive for us humans to connect is profound; it is fluid and shifts as we develop and age, so it must be tended. I recently spoke at a workshop when a woman came up to me and spoke of the fact that she is estranged from family and has no friends. “What about me? What’s death going to be like for me?” she said. We began to explore the communities she was a part of, her sobriety group, a church she attended. It will take some work, but hopefully, she will be able to connect with people so that she does not die “unfriended.”
Dr. LS Dugdale explores the “forgotten wisdom” in Memento Mori and argues that when we embrace death or its symbols, we can begin to imagine our own death, and that when we do this, we will have a richer life.
With the emergence of medical technology, we humans were able to pretend that we could live on and on. Death became “medicalized” and therefore, lost many of the rituals and practices attached to it. People died in hospitals, sometimes alone, without their community surrounding them. Dr. Dugdale says that our very culture became “inhospitable to the art of dying.”
She notes that death came to replace sex in our culture as the “unmentionable.” It went into hiding, sequestered from public view. Luckily, this is beginning to shift in our culture now, at least a little. I see this in my doula work as I collaborate with patients who wish to embrace death as it is coming. They are more likely to be looking for richness and meaning in life. They want to make meaning of the life they have led, and they want to be in the moment of a full and robust life for as long as possible. This by necessity means they are remembering that they will die. It also means they are more fully present when they begin to die.
We are at a new year now, a time of resolution, presence, and awareness. Let us speak of our death; acknowledge our mortality, accept death as part of our life. We can concretize some aspects of our future death: plan for how we would like to die, take care of details like health care directives and wills and the disposal of our bodies rather than leave it to others. We can tell stories to our children and friends so that they know our wishes but also so that they know us. I have often been told by reluctant patients that doing this planning was liberating for them, getting it done opens the freedom not to have to worry about it anymore. Finally, let us risk getting a little closer to death in general. We often resist being with a friend or loved one on their death bed; we skip the funeral because it is too uncomfortable. Familiarity promotes learning, and that includes death.
On a day-to-day basis, Memento Mori means a slowing down, an appreciation of this moment, this day. It does not necessarily mean that it changes what we do in the way of work and play. But it does mean we look at those things with more discernment and presence.
In that graveyard in Mexico, sitting at the edge of a family group, I took a moment to breathe in the ambience of death and life together, of people grieving their person(s), listening to the chatter and festivities, the smell of the food, the soft music playing on someone’s phone. Laughing and living. Everywhere, there was a lovely combination of heartbreak and joy as well as resignation and acceptance. Within me, I felt an awareness of my own mortality. I too, will die.