Dia de Muertos, All Souls/Saints Day, Samhain

In many tragic cases, bearing the weight of psychological burdens is too much to live with, and suicide appears as a reasonable option. It's such a big issue over the last decade or so that "Deaths of Despair" are a thing in America and, as a result, life expectancy for the American male has decreased for the first time since such things have been measured.

This became tragically clear to me when my best life-long friend tried to end his life twice: once by jumping in front of a car while jogging at night (which didn't work – he was in awesome physical shape), and then again by self-immolation (which worked, but only later on after the paramedics got him to the burn unit and the doctors couldn't stabilize him).

The real tragedy was that no one knew this guy had any problems of a suicidal magnitude, including his wife, kids, and parents who were there to witness their husband/father/son on fire in their own back yard.

My friend was on a black-box psych med when he killed himself.

That warning rang loudly for me when, several years later, I, too decided to give SSRIs a try. I, too, came close to ending my own life, but only after I'd stopped taking the meds cold turkey, and against my psychiatrist's advice.

Samhain image courtesy Bee Felton-Leidel on Unsplash.com

But this isn't a post about psych meds or suicide. It's about losing a dear friend. It's about the altar in our home where photos of the ones we've lost are clipped to the arms of a mobile and orbit slowly above a sacramental display. It's about the memories we share with them, the feelings we recall when we see their images. It's about love, connection, friendship, family, joy in the journey - the joyous journey whose end will come for all of us. It's about the sadness, too, and the tension between the grief of loss and lost happiness in their presence.

In this second year of COVID, death has come closer and more publicly to many more families than in the past. This Day in 2021, however you choose to celebrate it, has a kind of unprecedented urgency: more of us want that elusive joy more poignantly than before. That is a powerful intention to honor this year.

Dia de Muertos image courtesy fer gomez on Unsplash.com

As you make your altar today, the day of All Hallows Eve, stay true to that intention for joy. Cultures around the world welcome that intention. It feels better to join in the intention for joy, don't you think? So long as we have free will and liberty to choose, let's join together in the paradox of joy as we remember those who shared it with us once, and as we remember them.