This Month Ends With a Day of the Dead Altar for My Daughter
I’m grateful for the opportunity to celebrate Ana
I started preparing for my daughter’s Day of the Dead (Día de Muertos) altar way back in early spring by planting some fresh marigolds. It was too soon to plant anything though. My region of New York was still getting frosts into the third week of April. In an attempt to save the tiny orange and yellow blossoms, I put glass jars over them every evening for two weeks. Then one day, feeling lazy, I decided to take a chance and leave them exposed. Sure enough, they perished in a late frost.
Undeterred, I waited a week and bought about 12 new plants, placing them in a sunny spot at the front of the house where they proceeded to flourish. They’ve been a fixture in my garden since then, still thriving even as everything else begins to wither and die.
These marigolds don’t make my garden look flashy. They’re not there to keep the deer away. I don’t particularly like marigolds. They smell swarthy and crowd out the much prettier dahlias. I plant them every year for my daughter’s altar. Ana died from cancer when she was 15 and the marigolds are my way of reaching out to her.
I created Ana’s first Day of the Dead altar in 2018 after seeing the movie Coco and learning about the Mexican…
