A Day We Let the Dead Come Back

I was quiet on the drive to Kara’s house.
So quiet that Patrick noticed.

At one point I asked him if he’d ever thought about what it means to have a witness to your life — how we’ve been witnessing each other for so long that we almost take it for granted. The way someone knows your rhythms. Your worst habits. Your best intentions. The way they stay anyway.

I cried when I said it.
I hadn’t realized how heavy that thought had become.

Because my dad no longer has that.

June was the witness to his life.
And now she’s gone.

Who notices if he overreacts, or gets frustrated, or yells into the phone at a robot voice that keeps saying I didn’t quite get that? Who knows that this is just how he is — impatient, loyal, tender underneath it all — and loves him anyway?

Who witnesses the good things?
The pride.
The small victories.
The quiet generosity.
The way he shows up.

Sitting at the Christmas table without June, that absence felt louder than anything else. Not just the empty chair — but the missing knowing. The sense that someone sees you, notices you, keeps you from disappearing.

People like to talk about the bright side of being alone.
You can do what you want.
Make the bed or don’t.
Do the dishes or don’t.
Stay up all night.
Take a nap.
Hang up your jacket.
Leave it on the chair.

All of that is true.

But underneath it is the darker thought no one likes to say out loud:
I could disappear, and no one would notice. Not right away. Maybe not for days.

I don’t want that for my dad.
I don’t want that for myself.
I don’t want that for anyone I love.

I keep wondering if remembering them has to hurt like this.

Or if what hurts is the love that no longer has anywhere to go.

Love that used to be returned.

We don’t have a holiday for the dead in this country.
Not really.

We have funerals.
We have anniversaries.
We have an unspoken expectation that grief should eventually learn to behave.

But we don’t have a day that admits the truth:
that most of us would give almost anything to see them again.
Even briefly.

Día de los Muertos starts from a different assumption —
that love doesn’t end cleanly, and pretending otherwise doesn’t make us stronger.

The dead aren’t treated as ghosts or miracles.
They’re treated as family.

Their photographs come out.
Their favorite foods are made.
Candles are lit not to mourn, but to guide.

They’re spoken to — not spoken about.

And the idea is simple, and kind of radical:
the dead don’t disappear because time passes.
They disappear when we stop saying their names.

Maybe remembering doesn’t have to mean reopening the wound.
Maybe it’s a way of keeping the witness alive.

Not forever.
Not dramatically.
Just for a moment.

Light a candle.
Make their food.
Tell the story again — even if you’ve told it a hundred times.

Not because we expect them to walk through the door.
But because remembering is its own form of presence.

Día de los Muertos doesn’t deny loss.
It gives it a place to sit.

I think we could use that.