This past summer, my dog passed away. My dog was truly my soul dog, a tiny piece of my being embodied in the small chihuahua I found on the side of the road when I was eight. She was my little shadow, following closely behind me from room to room; she chose me as her person and I adored her with every fiber of my being. She came along to every coffee shop I went to inside a tote bag, sat with me in the park when I met up with friends, and accompanied me on every nighttime walk around my neighborhood. I couldn’t imagine my life without her.
Yet, on October 27th, I found myself creating my first ofrenda for her. As I sat on the floor, stapling together flimsy layers of orange tissue paper and crumpling them to resemble the curved petals of marigolds, I could not help but feel slightly sad. At home in Los Angeles, I knew that real marigolds or cempasúchiles would overflow in the floral sections of grocery stores and glimmer like candle flames against gravestones throughout cemeteries. Bunches of bright orange flowers would overflow on ofrendas in honor of those who have passed away. As I placed a lit candle beside her photo, I longed for the tradition, which is sparsely celebrated in the UK.
Día de Los Muertos, which is celebrated in early November, is a primarily Mexican tradition connected to the Aztec goddess, Mictecacihuatl, “who allowed spirits to travel back to earth to commune with family members,” combined with Roman-Catholic All Saints Day traditions. During the first couple days of November, the dead are believed to be capable of returning to earth. Ofrendas (altars) are set up in their honor and are covered in marigolds, whose scent and bright colors are believed to guide spirits back to the world of the living. Similarly, photographs, candles, calaveras, sugar skulls, and the deceased’s favorite foods and objects are placed on the ofrenda, a tradition which stems from Aztec and Nahua beliefs that family members could be provided with food and water to assist them into the afterlife. The holiday is not a sorrowful one but a celebration of the cyclical, inevitable and beautiful nature of life and death.
As I stared at the photos of my dog, which outlined the fireplace, I realized that for the first time I was able to reflect upon her death without the overwhelming feeling of sadness. I was honored to have spent her last summer with her. I could imagine myself laying in bed on a warm summer night, watching Sex and The City. She would be burrowed underneath the covers with her tiny chin resting on my thigh and snoring gently. We would often sleep at night with our ribs touching, the feeling of her small stomach pressed against mine an immense comfort. When I sat in front of the mirror on the floor of my room to do my makeup in the morning, she would burrow into my side and nudge her nose under my hand, forcing me to set down my makeup brushes so I would pet her. She was so determined to follow me around, she often ran outside to jump in the passenger seat of the car when I was leaving the house and she would start jumping around after I came out of the shower. I took her everywhere with me, even sneaking her into my favorite restaurant so that she could sleep on my lap as I ate dinner with my boyfriend and mom.
She was a huge part of my family and beloved by all my friends, with one of them even painting a portrait of her and gifting me a keychain with stickers and photos of her. Even my dad, who had been very reluctant to adopt more pets, secretly loved her. He watched her roam the front yard as he sat on the front porch and fed her pieces of beef from tacos in the dead of night, causing her to incessantly go back and forth between my room and the kitchen to my annoyance.
When she died, my heart truly broke. I found myself unable to imagine my house without her. My ears were attuned to the sound of her little paws walking across the creaky floorboards. I was used to lifting her onto my bed and sofa every time I sat down and looking back every time I left the house to see if she wanted to accompany me wherever I was going. She was so deeply ingrained into my life, the silence she left behind startled me. If I stared at her empty dog bed for too long, an empty can of cat food she had snuck out of the trash still hidden under her blanket, it would fill me with not only sadness but sheer panic.
I felt that not only was I mourning her absence but the death of my childhood. I could no longer overlook the years that had passed since I moved away and started a life halfway across the globe. The fact that my childhood, my house, and the version of my life that I had left behind were over, and the fact that I could never return was a startling one to cope with. I was not ready to acknowledge this change.
Yet, as I sat before the ofrenda I had crafted for her thousands of miles away, I was able to feel something I had not yet been able to feel: gratitude. As I watched the candle flames flicker in the cool October breeze, illuminating photos of her, I felt as if my memories of her were glimmering before me and bathing the entire room. I was able to recognize the beauty of the time we had spent together. I was grateful I had got to be a girl with her and that she had watched me grow up.
Unlike many traditions that commemorate the death of loved ones, Día de Los Muertos celebrates the beauty of both life and death, as well as the thin line that separates them. During Día de Los Muertos, the world of the living and the dead become one. As summer gives way to fall, trees erupting in fierce orange and red before quietly ending a season of their life, we are able to see that life is merely a never-ending series of cyclical change. There is a beauty in death, in celebrating the lives of those we loved through brightly colored papel picado, glittering calaveras, and glowing candles— feeling the swell of change around us. Through honoring her death, as well as the years of our shared girlhood and the ways in which that time has passed, I am filled with gratitude for the tiny chihuahua who became a piece of my heart the moment she wandered onto the sidewalk across from my house.