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PS: Using Poetry Therapy on Halloween and Day of the Dead

© Kara L.C. Jones

This article is a postscript to my last article about Dia de los Meurtos (Day of the Dead). I realized after publishing that piece that there are many ways to use writing and poetry as process during the Halloween season. You find many cliches and "silly" works of writing about tricks and treats during this season. I know as a bereaved parent who painfully misses her child during this time of year that Halloween is so much more than that. It's a time of reflection and re-definition of those cliches. And all of that re-definition is part of mapping our own personal grief to try and figure out how to survive day to day. In that light, I offer the following:

 

Untitled I.

Time and again the chill comes. It creeps over me, the crisp wind and the call of the whispy ghosts off the white caps of the water. Down in my bones, I feel them, porous, open, and calling for warmth from hot cider, heated blankets, heavy coats, the healing touch of my husband's hands. Yet, even when I drink all that in, even when it is soaking the marrow of my bones, I still ache from the chill. There are people who think your bones warm up again after the death of a child, but I know now that they are wrong. It has been three winters since my son's flesh and blood met with the heat of the crematorium, and I am still chilled.

Untitled II.

Ofrenda. It's such an interesting word. An altar, an offering. Fruit, bread, sugar skulls, marigolds, photos, candles, prayers, simple slips of paper with the names of a loved ones written in a shaky hand. Pungent fragrance, light of fire, migration of the monarch butterflies, all calling the dead to come home, back to the hearts of those who miss them so. Halloween. Not just snickers bars and plastic, store bought costumes. But rather, October 31st is the witching hour when the spirits of our dead children lead the envoy of souls back through the veil, lead the dance and mirth and celebration at the graveyards, remembering the earthly love of mothers and fathers, grandemama and grandepapa, all coming back together for Dia de los Meurtos, Day of the Dead.

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