Day of the Dead
Every year on this date, for probably the last 10 years, I have dutifully gone into my closet and dug out my Día de los Muertos t-shirt, bought one autumn from a foreign language teaching supplies catalogue. I wore it to school when I taught, and we always did a holiday activity. For the younger kids, we colored paper “candy” skulls and glued on glitter and other messy stuff; for the middle grades, we did calavera puppets; and for the older ones we did papel picado, and hung them in the classroom all year long. By the time I quit teaching, it’d become a personal tradition, and I continued wearing it every November 2nd, All Souls’ Day, even though I’ve been out of the classroom for 5 years.
The shirt stayed in the closet today; the holiday is far more personal than it has ever been to me. There is a little ofrenda on my desk that has evolved over the last 2 months: A’s picture, an ironwood statue of an owl, a candle, a silk sunflower in a beer bottle, a Tibetan prayer wheel, a box of Irish Spring soap, and I think the bridge to my original violin is up there, too. He touched it, worked with it, to make the one that I lost. There is another, I suppose, over my music stand, with his pictures, his Beatles album, some tiny pinecones he picked up and gave me on my last trip to see him. There is more…it’s fair to say the whole room is a shrine in a rather integrated way; that’s kind of what happens when your life merges with another’s: the lines blur. And you want them to. I keep it in here, both because I spend a lot of time in this room and it comforts me, and also out of respect and consideration for E.
A, as I’ve mentioned, was hilarious, and nothing, absolutely nothing, was sacred. Anyone who knows me knows that I would find such irreverence absolutely scandalous and intolerable, which is why it was not unusual when he and I chatted that I would be gasping for air, laughing so hard that he would tell me to breathe. A man who makes me laugh is irresistible to me. (Just ask E, who amused me into marrying him and every day reminds me why it was the smartest move I ever made.)
A was the king of the running in-joke, and we had many. One of his favorites has become ironic in a way that he no doubt would love. We talked a lot of history, and whenever I mentioned anyone no longer among the living, it would be met with a flat “He’s dead.” If he was feeling whippy, he would proceed to riff on (and rip off) the Monty Python “Parrot” sketch, and whoever it was would be “an ex-President,” or whatever, and I would say "the Watergate don’t enter into it!" and then we’d be off. I of course stole his best material, and whenever he mentioned one now amongst the heavenly choir, I would try to beat him to the “he’s dead.” And even now, every time someone famous who has passed on comes up, I think of the joke I’m not making, because death just isn’t quite as funny lately as it used to be when he was the one making the joke.
Yes, we were sick individuals. But we were happy. And boy, did we laugh. If I had to be told to breathe and he had to take off his glasses, it was a great night. And a tie as to who was the funnier.
I miss him so much. But talking and laughing together is what I miss most. It’s the best part of life. It really is.
Te recordaré y te amaré siempre, querido mío.