How Mexico Puts the "Fun" in Funeral

Image by Lisa Yount from Pixabay

Heading off for a big trip, especially out of your home country, often serves as a handy reminder to ensure your affairs are in order. You know, just in case. The situation in the U.S. being as tumultuous as it is, the least we can do as elders is to avoid leaving our loved ones a massive bureaucratic headache on top of what they’re already dealing with.

I’m all about walking my talk, so beyond having a will, trust, etc., all in order, I prepared a document with instructions on what I want done with, and about, my mortal coil once I've shuffled it off. I sent it to my adult kids before our trip. In characteristic fashion, though, I kept it as open-ended as possible.

For a memorial service, I didn’t stipulate any particular location or even music. I simply suggested a simple party held somewhere convenient. Cocktails/mocktails and nibbles, shared memories, that sort of thing. Low-key, not too demanding.

This is entirely on-brand, considering my upbringing. My mother, raised in the stultifying atmosphere of an early 20th-century midwestern farm town, grew up with the understanding that just about the worst thing a girl could do was to draw attention to herself.

I absorbed this, practically through my pores, as an operating principle. “Fools’ names and fools’ faces/always appear in public places,” went the cautionary rhyme Mom often invoked.

Add that to our culture’s tight-lipped squeamishness about death, and it’s no wonder that I was about ready to have my own ashes practically swept under the rug. I mean, it’s only my final exit from the world stage. Let’s not make too big a deal out of it.

A week in San Miguel de Allende has altered my thinking. Dramatically.

The best part of any trip to another country is what you don’t plan, the experiences that arise spontaneously. On our second day in San Miguel, while making our way along one of the cobblestone streets near the central plaza, we happened on a funeral procession.

And there was nothing shy or restrained about it.

First came the hearse, an Adams Family-worthy vehicle with generous side windows and a wide-open back, all the better to show off the wooden coffin bedecked with some of the deceased’s favorite possessions and accompanied by a huge, floridly painted and gold-embellished skull.

Following the hearse, the chief mourners — presumably family — walked with slow solemnity, as you’d expect in any such procession. But rather than keeping their heads down, many of them turned their gaze to the spectators as though to invite us to behold this occasion, this passing of a man who had clearly meant a great deal to them.

Two of the mourners held a large fabric banner bearing the name of the dead man and many hand-painted wishes for his journey into the great hereafter. The largest of these, in gold paint, read Hasta luego — see you later — a frank acknowledgment that we will all, one way or another, make this same trip.

Then came the DJ, driving a truck laden with two enormous speakers that pumped out heart-thumping, foot-lifting music.

And behind the truck were easily a hundred masked dancers, stepping to the beat with deliriously macabre glee. I was too entranced to capture it on video, but click on this YouTube snippet from another San Miguel funeral and you'll get the idea:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-vymxyhEGg&t=4s

It was the perfect opposite of death denial, and the effect was wildly joyous and life-affirming. In Mexico, at least in this part of it, death is not so much the occasion for oppressive, existential dread as it is in the culture in which I grew up.

Like, we’re all headed to the same finish line, people. Why not dance along the way? Sure, it’s scary, but scary like a thrill ride — just one that ends up somewhere none of us can see from here.

The last element in this funereal parade was another truck, this one laden with flower arrangements, no doubt intended for the graveside. And then the crowds around the main square went back to whatever they’d been doing — shopping, snacking (in San Miguel, you’re never more than ten feet away from something delicious to eat or drink), sitting in the shade of the plane trees in the park while listening to strolling mariachis or watching the mojigangas — giant, wearable puppets — pose for photos with turistas.

Mojigangas (with tourists for scale); photo by author

The veil between life and death feels a lot more permeable in a place like San Miguel de Allende. I came away with a more visceral sense of the temporary, transitory nature of my own life and a deep appreciation that I get to take the ride, as far as it goes, at all.

Maybe it’s not realistic to ask my kids to arrange for a crowd of wildly masked dancers to parade through the streets when my time comes. But I’ve already lived too long to die young, which makes me very lucky.

It’s something worth celebrating. Probably with something more raw and raucous than a polite gathering. I’m revisiting my memorial plans.

Know any good DJs?