Saturday, November 2, was All Souls’ Day. We didn’t celebrate hard. No problem, we can get back on track since we are, know, in the middle of a festival of the dead.
Posted at 1:28 a.m.
Updated at 6:00 a.m.
The programming begins on October 31 with Halloween, whose name is a contraction of the English words All Hallows’ Evewhich means “All Saints’ Eve”. The 1is November is in fact All Saints’ Day, celebrating the dead VIPs of the Christian church: the saints. November 2 is All Souls’ Day, commemorating the ordinary dead, like those you and I will one day be. Let us especially not forget Remembrance Day, November 11, honoring fallen soldiers. And all the other days of the month are also dedicated to the deceased, Pope Leo XIII, in 1888, having designated November month of the dead. A great deal!
Does all this depress you, chill you to the highest degree? That’s precisely the problem. The dead are never entitled to the celebrations they deserve because we, the living, always look at them with our funeral faces. Either we celebrate them in a sober, somber or hasty way, or we forget them completely. However, we owe them so much that we should celebrate them in a big way!
PHOTO MARTIN BERNETTI, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
A man visits the grave of relatives during the All Dead Day commemoration at the Amador General Cemetery in Panama.
There are so many missing people who are part of our daily lives. From the inventor of the wheel to that of the iPhone, from Jean-Sébastien Bach to Jean-Pierre Ferland, from Victor Hugo to Alice Munro, from our parents to friends who left too soon. We live with the dead.
The dead are not dead, since their lives served and still serve to bring us to where we are. Their ashes may be in the cemeteries, but what they sowed in us and in the landscape continues to grow.
Continue to bloom. There is reason to celebrate. Not just by lamenting.
Should take inspiration from Mexico. THE Day of the Dead which takes place there at the beginning of November is a Day of the Dead filled with joie de vivre. A manifestation of the love and respect that Mexicans feel towards lost souls. They dress up, put on makeup, parade, sing, dance, eat, have a blast. In short, they party. Not the face.
On altars, they place offerings, flowers, water, food, candles and family photos. They recite poems filled with humor. They decorate the streets with colored paper. They give concerts. We are far from the wreath of flowers placed all in black next to the hearse. By giving love to their dead, they tame, at the same time, their own death.
PHOTO CARL DE SOUZA, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
An elderly woman sits next to a decorated grave takes part in the All Souls’ Day commemoration at the San Gregorio cemetery in Mexico City on Friday.
Of course, the departure of a loved one is an infinite pain, an always raw wound.
The idea is not to hide it, to freeze it; the idea is to allow this suffering to express its beauty. The beauty of a bond that never breaks.
Are we capable of foreseeing a month of Mexican deaths? Rather than sinking into despair, we use it to pay tribute to those who have left us, with courage and brilliance. May November become the month of memory. In memory.
Each time a notable personality dies, we are moved, we pour out our hearts, we talk about their greatness, how unforgettable they are. Then… we forget it. And we move on to the next deceased legend. Why wouldn’t we use November to remember all those unforgettable memories that have already been forgotten?
And to prepare you for a month of November that is more luminous than dark, allow me to offer you a song about death, which uplifts rather than buries. It is, in my opinion, the most beautiful song of all time about death. I become the wind againby Martin Léon:
I left my loves, I left my friends without separating us
I left my journey, I left today, I become a memory
I become the wind again
I make the bird fly, I make the ocean sing
Invisible again, I will live in spring
From now on
I left my work, my skin, my blood
I become the wind again…
I no longer have a future, I only have all my time
Like a first desire, like a rising sun
For you desperately
It was only a short moment
I become the wind again
Take away the r at death and it becomes a word. Léon found the words to soothe our mortal anguish. And his music softens him too. A masterpiece.
Let’s take advantage of the month of November to think about our dead, to talk about our dead, to love our dead.
It is too late to drink to their health, but still early enough to drink to their eternity.
