The Dead Can Be Celebrated — I Know That Now

I am imagining a time when my altar will grow to include all the people I’ve lost.

Jacqueline Dooley
Age of Empathy
Published in
6 min readNov 2, 2023

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Illustration by Jacqueline Dooley

I started preparing my Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos) altar in mid-October this year. First, I chose three photos of my daughter, Ana. In one, she is 11 and in sixth grade. The photo was taken about a month after her liver transplant in spring of…

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Jacqueline Dooley
Age of Empathy

Essayist, content writer, bereaved parent. Bylines: Human Parts, GEN, Marker, OneZero, Washington Post, Al Jazeera, Pulse, HuffPost, Longreads, Modern Loss