Tag Archives: Ajijic Panteon

My Day So Far (Sunday–Much Ado About Nothing)

2 Replies

Coco, looking eerily innocent at the beginning of the day.

I had a number of errands to do in town, including atoning for a misunderstanding yesterday (Saturday.) After 3 hours on the phone with my computer tech in Canada to set up my new Mac Air, (Yay! I’ve been trying to do this since July. Since then my order was cancelled once, then I finally had one sent to a friend in Oregon who just brought it to me in Mexico and I’ve been waiting for over a week for an appointment with Chad, the world’s best Mac whiz, in Canada, who hops into my computer and solves all problems.) After our session, I checked my phone, which I had turned off, and found a message from a friend asking if I was on my way to pick her up. Unfortunately, I thought I was giving her a ride to Chapala on Monday and she thought I was doing so on Saturday. Guilt, guilt.

Since she is pretty much wheelchair-bound, I thought I’d atone by doing some grocery shopping for her, since I needed to go to Walmart to buy a number of items that couldn’t wait. On the way home, after shopping and leaving her groceries by her house, I’d stop by the Panteón and do some work on the three graves I adopted 8 years ago. If you want to know how that came about, go HERE.

At any rate, the graves were again in a terrible state. The bougainvillea and agave I’d planted a few years before had pretty much taken over the graves so you couldn’t even see the gravestone. I could tell Oscar had been there and pulled the weeds, in addition to the bougainvillea,  here was a huge stump of some treelike intruder that had been hacked off but not fully removed and the gravestones needed sweeping and scrubbing. Unfortunately, however, although I’d set out the gloves, clippers, broom and garbage bags I needed the night before, then assembled the bucket and cleaning supplies this morning, when I stopped off to view the state of the graves before going to Walmart, I realized I’d left all the supplies I’d assembled the night before sitting on the garage cabinet.

So it was to Walmart, where I discovered they have removed all the Day of the Dead and Halloween decorations…row after row of them…and were setting up Xmas decorations!! This 4 days before Day of the dad and two days before Halloween!!!! They can’t have sold them all as five entire rows as well as a huge display at the front of the store had been there two days before. Talk about rushing the season!!!! So, I searched in vain for Halloween candy to contribute to the bags made up by a committee in the fraccionamiento where I live. To compound the matter, although they did have Dead Bread—a necessity for every grave and every altar…They were sold only in containers of 12 or in very large loaf sizes. I had 12 waiting at home, minus the one on my altar and one I’d eaten. I needed 3 for the graves but had of course left them along with the candles at home. So I. bought new candles and a broom, thinking I’d make do, but when I turned off the Carretera to stop by the cemetery, I discovered too late that I’d driven right by it and was a mile down the road. Then when I finally found a road that connected it to the carretera again, I realized I’d already passed my friend’s house and was half way to San Juan, where I live. So why not just go get the needed tools and come back, leave my friend’s groceries off, and go do my duties at the graves? But, nearly back home, I realized my friend had told me just to leave her door unlatched. If I drove home and all the way back, I’d be much later than the two hour wait I had predicted and once again she’d be waiting for me. So, I turned the car around, went back the three or four kilometer’s to her house, lugged the shopping bag to the door to find it….locked!!! I hated to ring the doorbell and cause her to struggle in her wheelchair from the back of the house or even perhaps upstairs, so she had to come down via elevator. But luckily, the woman next door saw me struggling with bag and lock and came with a key. Only to discover it was now bolted from inside!!! It must have been the lady who arrived earlier, she said, and rang the bell. Luckily the woman, not my friend, answered, I put the groceries away and drove to the Pantheon..and, as I was parking, a large van drove up and honked just as I was getting out of the car. It was Yolanda and Oscar, with clippers, buckets, broom and garbage bags!!!!!

I had no idea they were coming today and if we had planned it we could not have coordinated so well. So in the end, I clipped the bougainvillea, Oscar did the heavy weeding and cleaning up of the soil around the graves. They got rid of the huge stump, although I don’t know how they did it. When I went to buy flowers and more candles, Yolanda cleaned off the graves and by the time I got back, all was readied. We put the marigolds and candles on the graves. To atone for a year of neglect, I lit the candles. If they didn’t blow out, I’d replace them tomorrow when I came to place the dead bread, beer or Cokes, and to hang the papel picado streamers and banners. For one more year, the dead would be placated.

My altar at home almost completed, I had but to find a proper item to place in front of Bob’s photo. Somehow I had forgotten my friend Betty and sister Betty, and had gone through bushels of photos to find the most flattering one of each and so needed to also add a symbol of each in front of their photos except….

That night, when I finally let the dogs into my room to sleep, I mistakenly left the door between my bedroom and the rest of the house open. I was working on the computer in bed but had fallen asleep when I heard a crash and, seeing the door open, I knew what had happened. I moved to the hall to see the papel picado skirt around the alter in shreds, the glass candle holder spread across the floor in shards and my mother’s framed photo tipped over and nearly invisible, having slipped behind the small cabinet the altar was set up on. This act of vandalism was not unprecedented. See HERE the scene last year, When a different doggie decided to go after the dead bread. This time I had placed two large milkbones in a cross and two beefy stick treats on each side in front of the dead bread and all were untouched. Undoubtedly, the shattering glass had saved the day, although I must say the doggie treats and dead bread would have been more easily replaced.

So, Coco, in disgrace, was banned from the house while I cleared away some of the damage. Tomorrow I’ll replace the papel picado and Yolanda will sweep up shards I overlooked in the darkness of the hall. Coco is once more installed in my bed—a necessity when she was going crazy over the opossum negotiating the high wall of the backyard into the front yard for her nightly feeding. There she promptly got into a hissing exchange with the cats, who I brought in to preserve the peace. The opossum has long since finished her dinner and the cats have again been relegated to the outside lest they, too, decide to visit the altar.

Tomorrow I have two English lessons to give and then need to redo the altar and get the huge bag of  Halloween treats  I finally located in the regular candy aisle to the guardhouse, since after buying it, I ran into a member of the social committee who told me they’d already prepared the bags for town children two days ago. Years ago they decided it was easier to distribute the treats at the bottom of the hill than to have children traipsing up the hill to home after home…and I had heard after a hiatus over Covid, they had resumed the practice, so again, I am tardy for yet another task and will just give the candy to give to the kids who are themselves tardy and arrive after all the bags are gone.

I will finish decorating the graves–still a day early, as Day of the Dead for children is on Nov.1 and for adults, Nov. 2. For once I’ll be ahead of the game and all will be well for another year. Oh. Except for Thanksgiving. and Christmas. But, tomorrow is another day and let’s not worry about it, okay?

My new computer, by the way, with a few exceptions, works like a dream. I’m typing this on it now!!!!!

Coco, looking innocent
Yolanda and Oscar, my saviors
The (almost)completed plot.
Grave minus a few necessaries
And… the altered altar
broken candle holder.
More torn papel picado.

Panteon Afternoon–Dia de los Muertos in Ajijic, Mexico, 2015

29 Replies

Panteon Afternoon–Dia de los Muertos in Ajijic, Mexico, 2015

I was driving home from Ajijic today and as I drove by the Ajijic Panteon, I realized I haven’t really walked through a cemetery on the Day of the Dead for a few years, so my car veered off.  From past experience, I knew that the graves would run the gamut between wildly and extravagantly decorated to sadly neglected for years to tragically neglected for decades. This is some of what I saw as I walked through the graveyard for the next hour and a half:IMG_7793
IMG_7728 IMG_7733 IMG_7724 IMG_7684IMG_7673 IMG_7675 IMG_7672 IMG_7671 IMG_7669 IMG_7667IMG_7662 IMG_7661IMG_7622 IMG_7621 IMG_7637 IMG_7635 IMG_7633 IMG_7628 IMG_7627 IMG_7626Women were trimming flowers and sweeping gravestones and dirt.  Men were touching up paint and clearing away a year’s debris.  Abuelas were unpacking huge covered bowls of food, opening tins of tuna to make sandwiches, asking where the paper plates were. Small children were zigzagging through the narrow passages between graves or perched nonchalantly on the low walls surrounding the graves or even on top of the headstones:
IMG_7643But not all the children.

IMG_7790 IMG_7761IMG_7624 IMG_7700 IMG_7694Some of the most elaborately decorated graves were sadly those of children. It is most clearly here that you can see what an emotional outlet is furnished by this daily celebration of the life of loved ones. This is evidenced by the fact that the only tears shed for the hours I was there were shed by me.  But I’m getting ahead of my story.
IMG_7736
The beauties of the day are obvious in the few scenes I’ve shown, but it very quickly became obvious to me on earlier visits and during this one as well that the contrasts were as vivid as the colors.
IMG_7745Some of the grave markers and headstones were sunk so far into the ground that it was impossible to know who they had been placed there for. They stood lopsided, sunken, broken and forgotten with no flower or personal food or drink or object to reflect the personality of the one who resided beneath. And this is why I made the long trip back out to the front of the Panteon to where vendors were selling  pots of marigolds.
IMG_7722 IMG_7710 I started to decorate the most neglected graves. When the first two plants were quickly depleted, I started to instead pull petals off the flowers to form the traditional cross made of marigold petals.  Still, I returned to the vendor two more times to purchase more flowers.IMG_7709 IMG_7683 IMG_7677IMG_7665Then, in a plot next to one of the largest and most elaborately decorated plots, I found this:
IMG_7754 IMG_7752 IMG_7750It was by far the worst plot I’d seen.  It had been entirely taken over by huge plants and it was obvious that it had been used as a trash dump for those decorating other graves.  Years of pop bottles, plastic pots, paper, broken glass, discarded wreaths and flowers and bricks and stone had been tossed over the rusted leaning gate or the carved stone fence that surrounded the three gravestones. Unlike many of the other smaller sites I’d decorated with simple marigold crosses and stones, this was a large site with big marble stones, albeit tipped and stained from years of neglect.  “This must be a family that has died out,” I said to the women of the large family taking great pains to decorate the plot next to where this jungle was.  “Americanos,” said one woman, and when I looked closely, I saw that this was true.  They all shared the same family name.  The first, a woman, had died in 1957, the last in 1966–the year after I graduated from high school.  The name of a man I first believed to be the husband of one of the two women, turned out to have been born 20 years after her.  A son, I thought, and the “Frances” I took to be a woman was probably his father.

Had they ever seen anyone visit this grave, I asked the family who obviously had visited their family plot every year for years.  As neighbors, they had to be the experts concerning this grave.  No, señora, they said with shakes of their head.  No one ever visited this grave.  Suddenly, sadness washed over me.  The idea of these people remembered by no one–people who had loved Mexico enough to live here at a time when there were no paved roads to Guadalajara or around the lake, no galleries or restaurants and if any, only one hotel–just took control of me and in this place where all was joy and industry and eating and drinking and music, I who knew not one person here was the one sobbing.

“You have a tender feeling,” said one woman, taking my hand. No one snickered, seeing this gringa who obviously did not understand the whole spirit of Dia de los Muertos. I was definitely the party pooper in this crowd!

On my way out of the Panteon, I encountered two policemen–one of whom spoke enough English not to be frightened by my Spanish.  Were there people who hired out to clear graves?  I asked.  They accompanied me back to the far lower end of the graveyard, saw the plot, located a man.  We negotiated a price.  Be back in one hour he said. One hour? Surely it would take longer than this! But he said many men would make fast work of it, and to return in an hour and a half.

I drove quickly home and when I returned, it was with garbage bags full of aloe plants and sun rose vines I’d trimmed from my garden.  Trowels, diggers, candles, matches, a bottle of Bohemia beer (which I’m sure someone has pilfered and drunk by now), a can of Coke.  One the way down the hill I stopped at our little market and bought the last loaf of “Dead Bread” (Yes, they really do call it this.)
IMG_7769
This time, I parked by the lower entrance to the Panteon, wending my way with three large bags among vendors selling pizza, boiled peanuts, stir-fried garbanzos, cheap plastic toys, candles, flowers, ice cream, Cokes, beers.  I looked for the white crypt one of the policemen had pointed out for me to use as a guide in finding the graves, but I had walked right by them when a woman stopped me and turned me around to look at the spot I’d just passed.  There was no way I would have recognized it as “my” spot.  This is what I saw (minus the plants, candles and offerings. I was so stunned by the difference, I forgot to take a picture until after I’d done my simple decorations.):
IMG_7772
IMG_7781IMG_7774 IMG_7776The decorations are sparse, perhaps laughable to those who have decorated the resting places of loved ones that surround these three graves.  But hopefully the aloe will survive and spread, even without watering.  Perhaps the sun roses scattered between them and around the edges and draped over the headstones will take hold and so when I return, I will be able to plant something more colorful.

The two policemen returned and posed for me:

IMG_7778Did I pay $……..pesos, they asked, mentioning a sum 5 times what I actually paid.  No doubt they were expecting their cut from the men who had cleared the brush from the grave.  “No, I paid $……..,” I told them, quoting the price they had heard me offer.  It was twice the minimum wage for a full day’s labor–not only a fair price, but a generous one.  They nodded their heads and strolled off to other regions, as did I, feeling a little more connected to this country where I’ve lived for 14 years.  Yes, I know there are living people here who need my help more than these gringos dead for most of my life, but doing a small thing to honor their memory takes nothing from anyone else.  There is still enough for the living, even after spending a bit of effort and a few pesos on the dead.  And after all, we have just spent the past three days immersed in the celebration of death. Why not honor it with my actions as well?

http://ceenphotography.com/2015/10/25/cees-odd-ball-photo-challenge-2015-week-43/