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static_abyss) wrote2024-08-08 06:39 pm
static_abyss) wrote2024-08-08 06:39 pm
LJ Idol Week 5: Comparisons
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.
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.
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