When We Remember, They Return

Ritual helps: please advise.

This Día de los Muertos marks my third ofrenda—the altar made of marigolds and photos and fire (candles, palo santo). This year, I have a new integrante. I wish it didn’t, but my ofrenda will keep growing the longer I live. Ugh. People will die, because dying is what we have to do, somehow, someway. Or else, life as we know it will cease to exist. 

I poured the last of my mezcal as I lit the candles tonight. I’m drinking it now. It’s almost 9 pm on a Friday. The light of the candles and this screen is the illumination of my night. The fire (not the screen, but who knows how the spirit world evolves as we evolve) is meant to guide the souls of the dead, my dead, to my home, to my couch, here with me. The smoke of the palo santo, too. Luna, Efren, are you here?

You are. My thoughts and my tears are all the proof I need. 

If you’re not a poet, maybe you think the tears are bad. If you don’t think the tears are bad and you’re not a poet, you probably are a poet without realizing it. 

A few weeks ago, I was in San Francisco, and a friend of mine told me he was going to play a song for Luna, for me. And he brought out his guitar and strummed the beautiful chords and sang the words, all in Spanish, even though he doesn’t speak Spanish. He has Spanish in his bones, though, because he’s Filipino. All of the words floated into the air as if his soul knew Spanish.  

Sé que en las luces estás tú
Pero no sé a cuál mirar
Y si me rompo es dejavú
Sé que todo esto ya pasó

I know in the lights, you’re there
But I don’t know which to look at
And if I break it’s deja vu
I know, all of this has already happened

Last night, another friend wrote to me. I had sent a photo of my ofrenda, because of our shared friendship with Efren. And they asked me if I was summoning him, and then said “I wish I was there.” 

The ritual of the ofrenda isn’t a joke. It isn’t a game. I would feel like a fraud if it were, like an appropirator. But it’s one of the things that has made me feel closer to my dead than anything. Maybe it’s the thing that has continuously helped me the most. The ritual. I need to feel close to them. I need to. When I express my appreciation to Mexico for this ritual, it is with every ounce of sincerity I have. I urge you to join in.

You don’t have to be Mexican. For one, Mexicans, in my experience, aren’t like that. You just have to gather some marigolds, and some photos, and a candle or two. You have to believe that the light and the smoke will call them, in whatever way “calling” is to you, and I promise you it will be beautiful, the way grief is beautiful, the way love is beautiful. 

Ten years ago, I took a trip. A healing journey after my 29-year-old soul was broken, but it was the second time someone had broken my heart, so I knew better than to think that was it me in terms of love. It was on that trip that I became conscious of the source energy. You know, the energy behind all existence. It’s something I would never personally call “god,” because of how unfortunately loaded that term is, though I understand why some people call it that. 

The same friend who asked me if I was summoning our dead friend asked me if I was still in touch with the source. My response was to cry. I’m a crier, okay, but more than that, I wonder if lately, I’ve lost touch with this depth of being that makes me feel most alive. Have I? I spend way too much time on screens, writing for money but not writing for me. I don’t practice the depth the way my whole being asks me to, calls me toward. Not enough. All it takes is for me to do it, and yet. 

We call this “the journey” I guess. This part of my journey I’ve been feeling lost. I think I’ve found my way; still feel lost; still feel lost. I try new things. I regress. I try again. I try again. I keep up with myself, mysoul, I fall, I feel lost, I try again. It all fluctuates so quickly. Fine. Fall. Lost. Giddy. Fireworks. Sobs. Fine. Fine. Puddle of myself. Lost. Fine. Flying. Lost. Lost. Lost. 

I made my first ofrenda in 2022, a call to Luna. I made another one last year, another summoning of my beautiful Luna. This year, I had to add Efren, my dear friend who died in June all of a sudden (and now what happens to all of our plans?) :(

To be clear, I don’t believe in an after-life in a religious way. It’s fine if you do, but I don’t. So where then, do I feel I am summoning them from? That’s a good question, and like a good poet, I don’t feel it needs an answer. I don’t know. Pieces of energy might come together in a soul-ish way. Or maybe the bits of energy don’t even come together, but arrive in their own way. Or it could be all me, all the love that remains in me, conjuring. Deja vu. Sé que en las luces estás tú.

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Be taught now, among the trees and rocks, 
how the discarded is woven into shelter, 
learn the way things hidden and unspoken 
slowly proclaim their voice in the world. 
Find that inward symmetry 
to all outward appearances, apprentice 
yourself to yourself, begin to welcome back 
all you sent away, be a new annunciation, 
make yourself a door through which 
to be hospitable, even to the stranger in you.

—David Whyte 

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“There is something about ritual that resonates deep in the bone. It is a ‘language older than words,’ relying not so much on speech as on gestures, rhythms, movements, and emotion. In this sense, ritual addresses something far more primal than language.” —Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow

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I wish you the most beautiful rituals to honor anything you have ever felt deeply. I wish you love in the purest form, the kind that hurts when it’s gone. I wish you a way to peace despite, or really, in light, of it all.