El Dia de los Muertos

I would dearly love to have a conversation with these 2 sisters, my aunt and my Mom.    Today could be the day as it is celebrated in Mexico as a joyous occasion (aztec origins..) to remember the dead.     Their older sister lived in Mexico City when I was a child so I had occasions to visit there and first learned about this custom (Not that they really celebrated it… Fiona and I have made sugar skulls in the past...))

It’s a very interesting time of the year…my favorite.. With Halloween here probably coming out of the pagan Celtic festival of Samhain…the end of the light season and the beginning of the dark, when the veil between this world and the otherworld was thin and ghosts and fairies and the dead (all scary, not so joyous, but to be guarded against with costumes) could intermingle on earth.   It was Christianized to All Hallow’s Day/All Saint’s Day.  And of course Halloween is the eve of that..all hallow’s eve a version HERE.)  Too much to write about …sorry....there’s lots to google. (also. Freespiral’s entry for Oct 31 and it’s excellent links)

In the past I have made shrines to deceased loved ones for this day… but this is just a work of art on the wall (marble and mahogany) that Sculptor Alvin Meyer (“Admirer” of my Mom) did of the twins in the late 20s I think..(that's "twins" in Swedish)  I hung the Navajo necklace today as she loved it and wore it a lot and it reminds me of her.  There is a picture of them in 1989 (age 83) where she is wearing it.(extra)