The Day After...

"Why are you going today? I thought it was over yesterday?"

"Just want to make sure nothing was left behind. A lot more people are celebrating than used to. More people means more trash right?"

"But why are you going? Aren't there caretakers?"

Her friends didn't really understand. They tried. But they still didn't really get it. "We are all caretakers. Or we should be. That was the point of the past two days. Honoring our ancestors. Left over trash doesn't really show much respect."

"Well, have fun, I guess?"

When she got to the cemetery she grabbed her back pack and a trash bag out of the trunk of her car. She hoped it wasn't bad, but it was always better to check. 

She was glad that more people were partaking in Día de los Muertos traditions but there was a group that was just treating it as an excuse to party in a graveyard. Her mother called it the commercialization of holidays. Can you make it all about food and drinking? Then it's a good holiday. Hell, they made football games holiday days by adding buffalo dip, right? 

She picked up a few empty beer cans from the walkway. A few candy wrappers that had blown out on to the lawn. Just the normal picnic debris. Not bad so far. 

She stopped at the first gravesites of her family. They had spent the majority of their time with her mother's side of the family this year. She could see where they had tamped down the grass around the family plot. The marks from her grandmother's lawn chair. She was too old now to sit on a blanket. Or as she said, sitting on the blanket was fine, it was the getting up part that was too hard now. 

She opened her backpack and took out a small garden rake and tried to wipe out the marks and freshen the area. After getting the space tidied up she put her hand on the large stone with her family name and sent love out to all of her ancestors that shared the space.

Generations were laid to rest here. Married couples buried in the same plot, one on top of the other. Their children on either side with their spouses buried the same way. The family members who had chosen to be cremated had their ashes buried here as well. Or at least part of their ashes. Her mother's youngest sister had wanted to ride the ocean waves and so only a small handful of ashes was placed with the family and the rest was scattered off the coast of California. 

She kept walking through the cemetery. Her father's side was buried farther back. She had stopped by on Monday to pay her respects even though the picnic would be with her mother's family that year. That was the arrangement her folks had made years and years ago. They would alternate years with their families for each holiday. Christmas one year with hers, one year with his. The families never mixed. They were very different from each other. Her parents loved each other deeply, but they didn't expect their families to feel the same. And they didn't. 

She walked past some of the very old monuments. Tall imposing marble structures. Crypts where entire families were interred together. Coffins placed on shelves lining the walls. She knew that some of the older families would slide out a coffin and place the newly dead family member on top of one long gone. Bodies on bones her father would say. Her mother didn't much like to talk about it. But her father said dying was nothing to be squeamish about. Most everyone was going to do it after all. And then he'd laugh.

She untied the sweater from around her waist and put it on. It was always much chillier back here. Tall trees that didn't let much light in to warm the ground. 

She walked past a few of the older graves. She was in the oldest part of the cemetery now. Gravesites surrounded by decorative fences. She trailed her fingers along a few of them. Whispering greetings to those whose family names she knew. Even some that she only knew from seeing every other year when she would picnic next to the fence of her own family plot. 

She frowned when she saw one of the older headstones that was toppled over. She went to inspect the area but couldn't tell if it was the last storm that had caused it to fall or drunks screwing around. She made a note to contact the caretakers to have it put right. It would be too heavy for her to move on her own. 

She finally reached her destination. She took a deep breath and shook her head. Drunks. Probably the same ones who had toppled the headstone. She wished people would respect traditions. She wished people would ask why things were done the way they were done. But she knew that the way the world worked now it wouldn't matter. People didn't understand. 

It was going to take awhile to clean all of this up. She put her backpack down on the ground and got out the various herbs and potions she carried with her at all times. She was going to have to work quickly to clean the plot and bury the new trash before dark. 

She just wished people asked more questions. 

Cold iron. 

Twenty feet deep.

But it didn't matter if you opened the gate.