Day of Flowers: Day of the Dead, Ajijic, Mexico

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On Friday, I went to decorate the burial plot that I adopted three years ago. Earlier, Oscar and Pablo had cleared out the weeds for me and  Yolanda and I went Friday with flowers and to clean off the grave stones as well as to shovel out dirt that had fallen down from ground level onto the grave on the right. When we arrived, there were three young Mexican girls looking at our plot. They were very curious about who the people were who were buried there, since they had Anglo names, so I told them as much as forgottenman and I have been able to discover about the three people. Then a man from Guadalajara came and asked more questions.

When I started to go down to see about removing the dirt, (this plot of three graves is actually sunk down below ground level about four feet) one young girl said to wait and came back with a young man with a shovel who said he would clear out the dirt slide for me. He did hard labor in the sun for over a half hour, even removing stones and rocks that seemed impossible to dig up. When he left and I tried to pay him, he refused, even though I offered the money the traditional three times. It seems the boys from his school had come in a group to help out anyone who needed it. What a heartwarming experience.

The gravestones cleaned, the marigolds placed, we left and I returned the next day with Leslie, who had strung the papel picado for me that morning. We strung it around the fence surrounding the graves, then lit candles and arranged the dead bread, wine coolers for the women and a bottle of beer for the man, chocolate and more sprays of cloth flowers. Four musicians played very near by us the entire time. People came strolling by to talk. Scorching in the sun, we climbed up and sought the cooler shade. We walked around a bit and as you can see, there was no lack of flowers wherever we looked.

For Cee’s FOTD