Grief
It’s dark and the street is packed. I cup my small candle, move with the others to the sounds of the drum and the smell of copal. I’ve come here alone, but feel held up by the others, all of us huddled over tiny flames in our hands. I got here late because I didn’t plan to come. Who plans death? Not us. It was not until I was burying Wildthing, my elder cat, that I remembered, as I wrapped her in a silk cloth and covered her with dirt, that today is Día de los Muertos, and a procession. I grabbed a candle and came out to the street. As I turned the corner, I stepped into this crowd moving down Mission Street, and was easily swallowed into the group.
Being among strangers in communal grieving is powerful in a way I don’t expect; I feel it in my body. I know that after this walk with the candle that represents her spirit, when the flame goes out, I can truly let her go, and the rest of the grieving process will be easier and faster than if I’d not come here. Communal grief rituals are some of the oldest human healing rites, and I sense the ancestral power of this on a cellular level. An Aztec dancer jumps, a portal opens, and collectively we step in. This memory my bones hold is so deeply embedded, it is easily activated, its purpose to re-regulate my nervous system.
And it does, and it is, so I shouldn’t be surprised when the next time I encounter grief, 15 years later, I dream of her. She hops into my open bathroom window, as real and alive as ever. I thought you were dead, I tell her, and she flips her tail back and forth, jumps down into my house, and walks around as if we’d been there together the whole time. She doesn’t talk in my dream, which feels too real to be a dream, but her bright green-eyed stare says she is very much alive. I puzzle at this until I remember the essentialness, the transformative power of collective grieving, and understand she is here to remind me what to do with my loss. So, I go and get a small candle