Altar for the Dead

Someone at the restaurant asked me last night how people react to the altars for the dead.  Mexicans see death as a natural part of the life cycle and choose to laugh at it rather than cry. That’s easier said than done but one can bridge the gap by celebrating the life of the person being honored.

I normally have a group of friends join in the celebration and one of these creative people who enrich my life sent me this letter last night:

“… I thought of Budd during dinner and I thought of boxing.  I thought about being the “man in the arena”, bloodied but unbowed, and realized that what is wrong with that picture for me is that the one in the arena is ultimately alone.  In truth that is the dirty little secret of life which the boxer never knows.  It’s the boxer’s point of view: We enter the world dangling upside down from some doctor’s hand while his other hand is slapping our ass, and unless we are supremely lucky we leave it alone as well.  In between we do the best we can.  That lonely view of individualism is romantic and aggrandizing, but somehow it strikes me as missing something.  We were never alone.  Before we were conscious we were surrounded by the spirits of people some of whom would peronsonally welcome us into the world and some of whom departed it before we came.  We stood on their shoulders even before we could stand on our own two feet.  And those people stayed with us while they were here and those spirits stay with us always.  When we fight our apparently loneliest battles, we are not alone.  The person in the arena is fiction.  I for one am very glad of that.  To Budd, to the Day of the Dead, to All Hallows Eve.  To you my friend, much thanks.”