The Month of Carrying the Dead

Before the invention of incandescent bulbs, the night sky was so vibrant that the Milky Way spilled across it like a great river. The people of the Andes looked into this glowing ribbon and mapped out its dark constellations: giant bruise-voids that formed the shape of animals. The rainy season of November, when the rivers flooded, illuminated the constellation Yacana — a mother llama nursing her child. She drank the pain and sorrow from the overflowing ocean, keeping everyone dry and alive. And yet, amid this overflow of life came the month of carrying the dead. 

For the Inca, November was Aya Marq’ay Killa, a month of literally carrying royal mummies, or mallquis, through the streets in mummy processions. These were typically deceased emperors and powerful people, dressed in gold and feathers. Accounts say that Spanish colonizers, aware of how the people respected these mummies over the crown, made this practice punishable by 50 lashes and three days in prison. And so the dead remained underground, even during  November 1st and 2nd, when the Catholic Church subsumed the indigenous traditions of ancestor veneration into All Souls and All Saints Day. Many diverse, ancient customs mixed and survived within these Catholic holidays all over Latin America, resulting in different flavors of Day of the Dead.

My mother, who grew up in rural Ecuador, recalls how on Día de los Muertos, her family would head to the cemetery with offerings — bright blue hydrangeas clipped from my grandmother’s garden. Since my grandmother passed a decade ago, my aunt still tends to her hydrangeas, bringing them to her grave every November 2nd.

 My dad, who grew up in the rural Dominican Republic, refers to Day of the Dead as Día de los Difuntos – which began with a Catholic mass where the names of the dead were read aloud. Then came a trip to the cemetery, where the whole town spent the day cleaning the graves of their dearly departed, lighting candles, and offering flowers. On this day he’d wear his nicest clothes, because after sitting through a solemn mass and helping out at the cemetery, he’d attend lively parties where he’d listen to music and dance with his extended family. In this way, the dead united the living.

Last November 2nd, my husband, mother, and I gathered our ghosts at the kitchen table of my parents’ New York City apartment. Sitting around framed photos of loved ones from around the world who had passed on, we told their stories over tea and cake until the last candle burned out. Through laughter and misty eyes, we introduced each other to the parts of us we don’t often share. We laughed about how our childhood dogs would have hated each other. Shaggy, my family’s protective Maltese, would have nipped at Calypso, my husband’s portly labrador. We gave them both treats from my mother’s chihuahua’s stash anyway.  

It still surprises me that across cultures and even across hemispheres, November is associated with the dead. But each practice has something unique to tell us. My Scottish husband recalls going guising as a kid in his village, an ancient tradition meant to disguise children from hungry ghosts that visited the realm of the living during Samhain (October 31st – November 1st). The early guises were meant to be horrifying, made of sheep skulls, animal skins, and straw.  And in my own practice of Western Astrology, Scorpio Season – which lasts from late October to early November – invites us into the underworld, as its planetary ruler is Pluto, the Roman god of the dead.

No matter where I am in the world, my curiosity about the past becomes unquenchable during this time of year. It is when I call out to my living relatives for stories about their dead. It is when I speak my ancestors’ names aloud and light candles for them, when I sit in front of my altar and thank them. It’s when I research their stars, which are also my stars, but with different names. When I sit in the silence and listen for their whispers. When I make space for their mysteries. 

That great river of the Milky Way has flowed across the sky for millennia, capturing the curiosity, hopes, and histories of our beloved dead, who also gazed upon it. I imagine that on the other side of this glowing ribbon, the dead carry us too. They prop us up with their stories and songs, with their methods of survival, in our blood and our bones, and all the things we cannot yet see.