A while ago, a contributor to one of my editorial projects let me down on the subject of Day of the Dead. I found myself scrambling to become an instant expert, in order to meet a publishing deadline.
I hadn’t appreciated how widespread similar festivals are, in the world’s religions and cultures. Often they take place as fall turns to winter, as the world darkens. Whether then or upon a similar occasion at another time, we remember not just death, but the dead.
Current obsessions with vampires, werewolves, zombies and other such unwholesome inhabitants of the twilight zone don’t exactly fill me with delight. Particularly because a major teaching of All Souls’ Day, or Dia de los Muertos, or Diwali or analogous commemorations is that the membrane between life and death is very thin indeed, so that there can be and occasionally is some kind of transaction between here and the hereafter. It’s one thing for me to hold as true and holy and encouraging that sometimes my father can seem as close to me as he was in life, closer maybe; quite another thing to suppose that Count Dracula might pitch up for a little liquid refreshment. Which disagreeable thought leads me to three random points about this time of the year.
First: what a pity when Halloween became or becomes simply a focus for bloodcurdling fun, candy and ghosts. More wonderfully, it encourages us to brood over the souls of the departed, who have much to teach us for good and ill whether, like me, you are embarked upon reading biographies of people as diverse as Winston Churchill, Socrates, St. Augustine and Queen Victoria; or, also like me, you remember with deep thankfulness those people, now dead, who had an unforgettable impact upon your life. I find that there are more such memorable people now than once there were, a reminder of passing years.
Which is one reason for the second point: there’s melancholy at the heart of all this ghoulish glee. There are various strands to the sadness I feel, and all have in common a sense of failure. Well, failure may be too strong a word, but dissatisfaction, frustration or some such words begin to convey what I mean. These impactful people from my past are a source of rebuke as well as encouragement, a reminder of what I’ve failed to be and do as much as what I’ve managed to achieve. And other figures from my past, difficult family members and friends, trouble me because I couldn’t make things right with them before death closed a door to that possibility.
Finally, beyond melancholy lies hope. Our business with the dead isn’t finished: that’s at the heart of the meaning of the day of the dead. In some religious traditions, they form a great cloud of encouraging witnesses to the mercies of God; they may also lovingly remind God that we’re in need of forgiveness and renewal. Death is a new beginning as well as a significant end.
But is that hope reasonable or, to use an old-fashioned and loaded word: is it true? I turn to the hope of poets when my own hope burns low. John Donne (1572-1631) was an extraordinarily gifted and also very strange man: a satirist, priest and lawyer, as well as a poet. He became obsessed with death, because he was obsessed with the meaning of life. In his A Nocturnal Upon S. Lucy’s Day, Being the Shortest Day, he wrote what, for me, are some of the most poignant of words:
‘For I am every dead thing,
In whom Love wrought new alchemy’.
When my father died, it was his ‘Death be not proud’ that hastened hope and healing:
DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell’st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.
Last night we held our annual Samhain dinner, nine courses in honor of our “beloved and mighty dead.” We had about a dozen guests, and during the evening many of us made toasts and lit a candle for those who might have enjoyed the meal but could not be there corporeally. One of the reasons I like Samhain as much as I do, I think, is that it mixes the fun of life — dressing in costume, playing a part, having good wine with friends, trying to play Danse Macabre on the piano after far too much of said good wine — with the somber joy of being present with the dead.
Your observation that the fascination with vampires (whether standard or teen-age) was on point.
If you wish to view zombies may I suggest that you attend a play that is occasionally put on by the “Riverfront Playhouse” in Aurora. Their version of “Night of the Living Dead – The musical” is a riotous evening of black comedy and spoof.
Larry, “Night of the Living Dead: The Musical” is indeed riotous. My daughter played the young girl, Karen, for the past three years. Alas, to the great disappointment of many, the Riverfront is not putting on that show this year! Taking a hiatus, I guess. Martin, I always enjoy reading your insightful blog. Take care.