Día de los Muertos at the Catholic Worker

When my brother Joe committed suicide many years ago, our family was devastated. Loved ones gathered around us and in their presence our somber thoughts about Joe and his death were interwoven with wine, whiskey, camaraderie and community. It occurred to me that Joe’s body should be there, between us.

My brother was a surfer, swimmer and lifeguard; therefore, I thought, Joe’s ashes should be thrown into the sea. But no, you can’t have a body party or a burial at sea. In 1972, such things were not done in my circles. I had to deal with my grief as best I could, mostly privately.

But fortunately, this is not the end of the story.

Over the decades of my work in… Catholic Worker from Los AngelesI learned more about death than I ever imagined. Many people have died in our home from Skid Row, as well as from the AIDS community, both visitors and community members.

We have become a team of “death coaches”, accompanying these people in their final transition to the next phase of life. We have found that community, ritual and prayer help us all better understand death as a part of life and become more comfortable with our inevitable death, which is as natural as birth.

To this end, one of the most impactful rituals we have as a community is Dia de los MuertosDay of the Dead.

All Souls’ Day is a 3000 years old Mexican festival this has its roots in the Aztec goddess of the dead, Mictecacihuatl, who opens a passage for the dead to visit the living. The Spanish who had made their way into Mexico tried unsuccessfully to suppress the holiday, but as it persisted, they combined it with the Catholic celebration of All Souls’ Day.

Today, Dia de los Muertos is celebrated on November 2 and is both a prayerful remembrance and a fun holiday with festivities extending long before and after the actual date. All Souls’ Day is both a mockery of death and a reminder of its inevitable fall. Families go on picnics to the cemetery, decorate the graves of loved ones, and create ofrendaspray and sing to those who have passed away. On many ofrendasor altars, there is a mirror there that reminds us that one day our own photograph will be there too.

When she put it on Self-help graphics and art in Boyle Heights in 1970, Franciscan Sister Karen Bocalero and her team of Latino artists brought the Mexican tradition Dia de los Muertos our area by building gigantic outdoor altars, Papel Picadopaper flowers and a huge paper mache calvados. With huge puppets, clowns and costumes, processions and parades, they danced in celebration Dia de los Muertos into the hearts of the Latino population of East Los Angeles. My wife, Catherine, was inspired and began making a small Day of the Dead altar for the Catholic Worker every year.

But when Manuel Hernandez joined our community in the 1980s. Dia de los Muertos became a week-long festival. Manuel was a born artist; he could build a Day of the Dead altar in our house that would look like a Rose Parade float. He built a stage in our side yard and we were joined by performers: poets, musicians, storytellers, folkloric and Aztec dancers, who blessed the altar with sage smoke. The Mujeres de Maiz he prepared tamales for the huge crowd that had gathered.

Our altar contains over a hundred photos of loved ones who died: loved ones, friends, supporters, volunteers, activists and heroes. There’s Dorothy Day, Daniel Berrigan, Cesar Chavez, family members and friends from Skid Row. One of my favorites is Kieran Prather.

When Kieran died one Christmas morning, he was not the first person in our house to contract AIDS. During the AIDS crisis, Kieran and Catherine Morris created a “ministry of presence” to serve food at the AIDS clinic, talk to patients and staff, and listen to their stories. Many patients chose to spend their last days in hospice at the Catholic Worker’s home, surrounded by a loving community.

These were people rejected by their families, destitute, stigmatized by the larger community, and sometimes rejected by their lovers. These were people who needed to feel appreciated and accepted. As they entered their final days, there were sometimes tearful reunions with family and friends. But sometimes it doesn’t – just as tearful.

As we prayed the rosary around Kieran’s deathbed as part of our “liturgy of death”, we remembered the events of Kieran’s life in each decade: as a young brother in the Trappist Order, his leaving the Order and “coming out” as gay, his career as a writer and editor, his arrest for public opposing US intervention in El Salvador and joining Catholic Worker; and in the last decade we remembered his ministry of presence among AIDS victims and our hospice ministry.

We kept Kieran’s body with us for an extra day because many people wanted to visit him. At his request, we placed a bottle of his favorite Irish whiskey by his bed and offered each guest a drink. It turned into a joyous Christmas party with Kieran among us as we celebrated his life.

The next day we escorted his body to the mortuary van. They brought Kieran’s embalmed body back to our home for burial during our weekly Catholic Worker liturgy. Kieran and I stayed awake all night. Within a week, Kieran was cremated and his ashes were buried in our garden next to the diner, marked by a large wooden Irish cross carved by an artist friend.

Next to Kieran’s photo on ours Dia de los Muertos On the altar is a photo of my brother Joe surfing a huge wave in Malibu. While I may never have scattered his ashes at sea, I am grateful for the holidays that allow me to hold him close. May he always surf this gigantic wave. Our loved ones will never be forgotten.