Them Lovely Bones

 

One of the trips I look forward to the most in the future is visiting Mexico during their annual "Day of the Dead" festival (click on the photo above), because I think it's an absolutely beautiful tradition to keep. Native Americans* often have different funerary practices than European Americans, depending on the tribe and its geography. Out west, people were wrapped in several layers of decorative blankets, placed high in treetops on secured wooden platforms, and visited after the body was completely dessicated so their bones could be wiped clean, to be put back within a smaller bundle in a ritualistic design**.

I appreciate their traditions for representing a more mature attitude towards life and death. We are born, we live, and we die. Simple as that, or not, depending on your amount of life strife. But, wouldn't it be comforting to know that the children you gave birth to (and their children's children) came back to visit your grave in memorial every year, decorating the site with beautiful artwork made from the traditional designs of your culture? They would be the people who gently unwrap your bones, tucking you back into a fresh bundle, keeping your resting place neat and tidy. 

It's so cheerful, isn't it? Your family plot becomes a place people look forward to visiting, by celebrating your life (and theirs) eating and drinking the same foods you enjoyed during your life. It seems like such a loving thing to do, in contrast to our colder American burials, as performances of grief and mourning that often lack the real heart and soul of your loved one and their life. My grandparents were such fun people for me to be around, but their brood is most definitely not: there's nothing to be had for me by spending time with them, whether its over a burial mound or anywhere else, for that matter.

Then, why would I do something so intimate as grieve with them? They don't understand life! Would they understand death any better? They don't get it, any of it. I understand that life and death is a process because I was taught that and I've also experienced it, but I'm also the best student my family has ever produced. I'd rather be on my own, than suffer through a bad death with a bunch of people who lack feelings and emotions. Do you know what I mean? We need to change the way we feel about life before we can conquer death, or life-after-death, as part of G-d's eternal promise to us for an everlasting reality. That's the day I'm looking forward to: the greatest holiday of all time. ¡Salud!

*   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burial_Ridge
** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prehistoric_sites_in_Colorado

Birdhouses: Indoor Decor

The little white birdhouse.

I bought this pretty little house years ago, when I took care of my bedridden mom, down for the count with a broken back. I had spent some of the money I got from a contractual buyout (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2013/09/sunday-paper.html) to spend a month nursing her through yet another fall, the result of MS and her own inability to cope with the disease. She was depressed, angry, and prone to violent fits. My brothers had warned me over the phone that she had gone seriously downhill before I flew back East: a normally intensely neat women with daily cleaning rituals, her apartment started to become cluttered, dirty, and messy.

Years ago I discovered Feng Shui (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feng_shui), and while I wasn't a mad devotee by any means, I bought a few books on the subject out of curiosity. Much of it is simply basic good design sense for any space: lots of light, green plants for color, oxygen, and good health, water features for relaxation, and mirrors to bounce around the light, to make small spaces feel bigger. The different centers of the eight-sided Bagua correspond to different areas of life; there's one corner for wealth, another for health, and so on (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagua).

So, after nursing her physically and emotionally, I set about making her place warm and welcoming. First, I needed a lot of garbage bags. She had held onto papers that had the same year as my grandfather's death, which was never fully addressed in her mental health care routine successfully. I spent days going to her room to show her each and every piece of paper stuffed away into various nooks and crannies. She cursed me and fought me so viciously that finally, out of desperation and in exhaustion, I finally looked at her wearily and said "Look, honey, you can say whatever you want to me, but this process isn't going to stop. So do your worst. It won't change anything."

And like that, the spell was broken. I went to a crafts store soon after to begin bringing some cheer to her place. I created a little area of interest on top of a book case with a basket holding some fake ivy, and intertwining those branches, I stuck in these cheerful little birdhouses to add more interest. After I went back to Colorado, my mom thanked me for pulling her out of her downward spiral. She had gone to see a doctor who tested her for depression, and she had drawn a clock backwards, which is a positive sign of it. Her real recovery began, as so often happens when I am directly involved.

That time period taught me a lot about the power of beautifully decorated space, and how important design in the home is. It's where we spend most of our time. I hadn't really had a knack for interior design prior, because I never had the money or a place of my own to express myself, but once I came back to Brooklyn, my interest caught fire in earnest (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2011/01/joys-of-winter-comforts-of-home.html). This year, moving back home for my own reasons, my mom turned to me on the couch, and asked me, "What is that there?" Only the white birdhouse remained from my time nurturing her through that period. I took the little birdhouse away, into the other room, and there it now lives.

http://www.pinterest.com/mariedoucette/birdhouses-and-treehouses/