Cemetery Visit

Even though it was more than a week after Day of the Dead, last Saturday Alejandro's father wanted to make a journey to the area where he grew up so that he could place flowers on his mother's grave.

That morning Alejandro and I went to the Jamaica Market to buy flowers.

To my "gringo" mind it seemed as if he were buying an excessive amount of flowers, but then I have never decorated a grave in Mexico.  He bought two bunches of chrysanthemums and four bunches of gladiolas.

Large bundles of gladiolas cost only 30 to 40 pesos ($1.50 - $2.00)

Alejandro also bought four plastic planters and pieces of sponge to fit into the planters.

We drove through Mexico City traffic to Alejandro's family's home. He put the flowers into a pail of water and gathered everything that we needed.  It was noon before we left the house.  It took us another hour to cross the city through heavy traffic and get to the toll road heading west into the State of Mexico (the state that surrounds most of Mexico City).  We passed the city of Toluca (capital of the State of Mexico) and continued westward on a highway leading toward the state of Michoacán.  We saw monarch butterflies flying across the road.  (I did not realize until I looked at Google maps afterwards how close we were to one of the butterfly reserves.)  Before reaching the state of Michoacán, we turned off the highway, and at around 3:00 we reached our destination, a little town called Lomas de Juárez.  We were truly in rural Mexico.  Women were washing clothes in the river.  Ears of corn were drying in the sun on the roofs of houses.  Along the road were flocks of sheep, and there were chickens and geese in the yards of homes.

We reached the cemetery at the edge of the town.

The graves were still heaped with flowers from the Day of the Dead, although by this time many were wilted.  I understood why Alejandro had bought so many flowers.  You don't just place a nice, little bouquet on the grave, as we would up north.  

We found the grave of Alejandro's grandmother.  Other relatives had already decorated the gravesite.  We discarded the flowers that had wilted and saved the ones that still looked respectable.  Alejandro placed the sponges into the planters that he had bought.  He filled the planters with water until the sponges were thoroughly waterlogged.  We then trimmed the stems of the flowers and stuck them into the sponges.  

We then visited the home of one of his dad's cousins who still lives in the town.  It was night by the time we made it back to Mexico City.  It was a long day, but I felt honored to have been a part of this excursion to the cemetery.