Pivoting from the Day of the Dead to the Day of the Election

     Happy Day of the Dead!
     OK, first off, you’re not supposed to say “happy,” despite all the colorful calaveras de azúcar, or sugar skulls, and boisterous street parties. Because the Day of the Dead, unlike Halloween, is not a peripatetic candy festival for kids that has been retrofitted into a costumed beer bash for adults. It’s a solemn, reflective time of honoring lost loved ones.
     And second, as mentioned above, it is “Day of the Dead,” singular, Día de los Muertos. Even though there are at least two days, Nov. 1 and 2, the first to remember lost children, Día de los Angelitos, which is an agony almost too great to consider — heck, it’s hard enough when your children survive, grow up on schedule, excel, get married and go off to live in Washington, D.C., where you hardly ever see them.
     And the second, Monday, Día de los Difuntos, or “All Souls Day,” dedicated to adults. For starters. Some mark four, or even eight days, referring to the “Week of the Dead.”
     Complicated, right? You can see why a lot of folks ignore cultures other than their own. Once you start to unpack the actual details, there’s a lot to keep track of, and it’s easier to neglect something than to be wrong about it.
     Nor is the holiday limited to solemnizing your own family. There is, for instance, a strong political element, usually completely overlooked, lost amid the sugary bread.
     We might, for instance, pause to remember all the children who are gone but not dead, those in ICE custody. They are alive, though children, separated from their parents and plunged alone into a nightmarish, unending confinement in a sprawling police state who might easily wish they were dead. They’re not your children; but they’re somebody’s children, and while this might be hard for you to wrap your head around, those children are loved and missed as much as you love and would miss yours, if some performatively cruel government separated you from them to score points with its howling base. Maybe more.
      We might also consider the departed who aren’t blood relatives. Especially with Tuesday being what we could call the Día de la Elección — the Day of the Election — most likely, although at this point, we really can’t be certain, can we?

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