LJ Idol Week 5: Comparisons

[static_abyss]

I live in the comparisons.

In the similarities that let me know that my family once existed, once thrived, once walked those sacred grounds in Ocotlan and knew no pain. We were someone once, back before it was taken from us, before it became a choice of assimilate or die.

Our mourning is proof of that.

There is a script to it, a carefully choreographed dance that we all learn even when we don't want to. It comes to use like the heat comes during the dry season in Ocotlan, inevitable but not malicious. There's a comfort in knowing what to expect after we bury our loved ones and in knowing what is required and when. We don't have to think, only do, because the instructions for this have been passed down for centuries. The steps are second nature, a knowledge it almost seems we're born knowing.

It's in our DNA.

When we buried my grandmother, we knew what to do. We accepted the flowers, the candles, the condolences. Everyone knew where to go, what chairs to set out, what people to greet, what food to pack, what snacks to give out after the prayers. We knew the hymns like we knew the sounds of the campo, our voices joining together like the noises of nature join together to form the melody of those cerros.

I wish I could say there was freedom in being unique, in being singular, in foregoing the comparisons to the past. But there are no tales I can turn to, no books with pictures of my ancestors that I can hold in my hands. The old stories never lived past my great-grandmother because they were shared in another language, one I can no longer understand.

The similarities are all we have. The comparisons are how I keep my family history alive.

I cannot tell you the exact color of my great-grandmother's skin, or the sounds of my great-grandfather's laughter. I can barely remember the timbre of my grandfather's voice. But I can tell you that when our loved ones die, there's a year of commitment.

We gather every month on the anniversary of the death, so the family can cry together, so that our sorrow doesn't drown out our songs. The family first comes together at the wake, friends and extended family, cousins, great-aunts, uncles we haven't seen in years, person after person lining the halls of the funeral home. And they just don't leave. We fill the missing spaces of our loved ones with the rest of the family, with their presence, their cries, their songs, their prayers. Our voices louder each day so that the family knows it's not alone.

This is what comparison brings me.

Flowers, and candles, and charcoal, and incense. Food, and drink, and song, and sorrow carried into the night as the heat dies down in the pueblo and we finish our mourning rituals for the day. Deep breaths and we do it again, the cold seeping in through the spaces where our friends are not pressed close enough. So we get closer, gathering to keep the abyss at bay.

Maybe we only gather to keep the cold away on those long nights. Maybe there's something else to all of this, some hidden secret that lies underneath the "good mornings," and the "hello's." Maybe when a family friend hands me flowers and a candle, they're telling me something. Maybe the repetition is meant to be comforting.

Maybe that's what the ancestors intended. Comfort in place of their presence.

When we buried my grandmother, I couldn't help but think about all the gatherings that came before me. The prayers may have been in a different language, different words spoken into the night to accompany the dead. Their traditions would have been different too, not quite the same symbols, maybe not even the same flowers. But the core of it would have been the same.

People would have gathered to say goodbye to their loved ones. They would have mourned together, their cries turning into a glory song to accompany their dead. Maybe they would have beat their feet against the ground as a final goodbye, the dirt rising into the air until its smell seeped into their very bones.

Earthy.

Wet.

Alive.

Maybe the opposite was true. How would I know? Maybe the prayers were whispered sweetly into that dry Ocotlan heat. Maybe their cries were silent. Maybe like me, they sat and thought of their own ancestors. Maybe that's how we're all connected, in that long string of nostalgic sympathy, one loud enduring echo of love that reaches all the way from the first of us to me.

Maybe these tradition are about that. About how we remain connected to who we were, to the deepest parts of us that no one could ever touch. That unshakeable beginning that will endure long after I'm gone.

This is why I compare.

Because to stop would mean to let the last of us die.

Comments

[chasing_silver]

So, so incredibly true. This was wonderful.

[static_abyss]

Thank you ♥

[adoptedwriter]

Heartfelt and full of passion in this. Hugs

[static_abyss]

♥ ♥ ♥ thank you!

[roina_arwen]

Very evocative and well written.

[static_abyss]

Thanks!

[erulissedances]

Yes, ritual can define a people and all of those who identify with those people. Wonderful reminder

- Erulisse (one L)

[static_abyss]

I find that as I get older, I am better able to appreciate the rituals that my family has kept alive and I hope I can continue to pass that on to the next generations.

[muchtooarrogant]

I love your language throughout this piece, it's very evocative. "So we get closer, gathering to keep the abyss at bay."

Very well done.

Dan

[static_abyss]

Thank you so much!

[fausts_dream]

A lot of raw power here. I am voting for way too many entries this week but here is another.

[static_abyss]

I am glad that you liked this piece enough to vote for it ♥

[halfshellvenus]

Gorgeous writing, as always. I like the idea of a year of mourning rituals, because it usually takes at least a year for people to dig themselves out from under the heaviest level of grief. A tradition that acknowledges that pain, rather than trying to push it away, is much kinder to those left behind. And the shared community of mourning so much more comforting-- the only balm to grief is knowing that others feel it too, that the person lost mattered to them as well.

Did your great-grandparents speak an indigenous language rather than Spanish? Do other people still speak it, even if it was lost from your family?

[static_abyss]

If you don't mind a very long message, I love talking about myself lol.

These days there's a lot more information than there was when I was younger. I had to do a project recently for a Family Systems Class for my graduate program and part of it was recreating our family tree. It took a lot of hours, but I was able to piece a rough story based on church records and the stories my grandparents and my mother would tell me.

My maternal grandmother's father was the last speaker of the indigenous language of the little town my mom is from. His generation still spoke their native language, but because his parents' generation had been excommunicated from the Catholic Church (for reasons that I have to talk about separately), and because around the time of the excommunication there was an outbreak of the bubonic plague and the Spanish Influenza, a vast majority of the people in this generation died. And my great-grandpa's generation attributed the deaths to the excommunication and they grew very religious and by extension tended toward assimilating because that's how they would be forgiven. So, they never taught any of their children their native language and when the last of great-grandfather's friends passed away, he never again spoke in his native language. And all we have left now are words here and there.

It was really hard to learn about this, especially because as I did more digging and as I asked my family, it became clear that the outbreak of the bubonic plague wasn't an accident. The priest who excommunicated the town was from a port town where there had been an outbreak of the bubonic plague, and my mother's town was the only town that contracted the disease. And not to mention that when he came to excommunicate the town, he specifically asked that only the adults meet with him and that they were the majority of the casualties. They left a lot of children. My great-grandparents were 10 and 14 when their parents passed away. So all these kids grew up with minimal supervision and married really young.

All that to say that there's no one else left who speaks the specific version of our language. I can guess at what it might have been based on the region we're from, but there are many languages and genetically, we are a mix of three-ish different Mexican indigenous groups. My mom can sort of pick out the languages based on what she remembers her grandpa sounded like when he spoke with his friends. But it's all guesswork. We pretty much only have the scattered words and our rituals.

[rayaso]

This was extraordinary, as is your writing in general. I always look forward to your entries. I loved "The old stories never lived past my great-grandmother" - this is so very sad.

[static_abyss]

Thank you so much! I am glad that you enjoy the entries ♥

[xeena]

I really love how powerful and emotionally evocative your descriptions always are!

[static_abyss]

Thank you!

[banana_galaxy]

I really like the idea of coming together every month to cry together. That sounds like a wonderful way to acknowledge the grief and recognise that it still exists.

[static_abyss]

I also appreciate it. When my grandmother passed away, it was very clear that there was healing in the way we came together. It's nice to know that you're surrounded by a group of people who just get it and who will cry with you.

[drippedonpaper]

There is life and the future and moving on. But I love how you also mention that it's ok to "remain connected to who we were."

I also really love this line:
"so that our sorrow doesn't drown out our songs."

Reminds me of the quote "We are all just walking each other home" -Ram Dass.

Thanks for sharing your entry, sharing your heart.

[static_abyss]

That quote is lovely and it is exactly what I feel about our mourning rituals. We are exactly keeping each other company and keeping each other safe.

[mollywheezy]

I loved how you book-ended this piece with comparisons. Great use of the prompt!

[static_abyss]

Thank you! I'm glad you liked it.

[murielle]

That last line is so powerful, so haunting, so profound.

How we grieve is so vital and sacred and necessary.

Thank you so much for sharing this with us.

❤❤❤

[static_abyss]

I believe that grieving is necessary, for everyone and I have always liked that in my family, it feels like we're allowed to be as sad as we want without judgement. And then at the end of the year, we're also allowed to acknowledge a moving on of sorts. The sadness doesn't go away, but we're able to live with it and are given permission to continue.

[bleodswean]

I think this level of compare / contrast is how we preserve our traditions, how we encourage our memories to become steadfast stories. This is a strong piece of writing and the level of attention to your loved ones and the depth of your mourning is beautiful.

[static_abyss]

I feel like a lot of my writing kind of tiptoes around writing down these rituals/traditions/stories step by step. I always go in wanting to detail how things are done and then get derailed because everything is so tied up with my family and my experiences growing up.

[alycewilson]

Very strong! Every word matters here.

[static_abyss]

Thank you ♥