Yearly Greetings
Today is All Saints' Day, tomorrow All Souls' Day. It's the day of taking flowers to the cemetery, and visiting those who have gone. The week before is also the week of cleaning and scrubbing, getting ready for the visits. The day before is the day of rearranging schedules to be able to get everything done.
Monday I bought some roses and white chrysanthemums to make a floral arrangement to put in the niche where my parents are. Cemeteries here are the opposite of how we live. In rural Spain most people live in individual houses. When they die, they move to apartment block cemeteries. Each apartment house, or panteón, has between three and five flats, or niches. Sometimes two people share an apartment, but mostly they are singly occupied. This is because there are no rolling fields or hills upon which to keep spreading a cemetery like in the U.S. I remember visiting Forest Hills Cemetery near our house in Boston, and that was full of winding avenues and trees, like a very pleasant suburban subdivision. But in Europe there isn't enough land, so cemeteries surround the parish churches like streets of apartment blocks in the busiest cities.
I arranged the roses and mums and left them in a back room to take on Tuesday morning to the cemetery, along with all the other professional arrangements I had asked a florist cousin to make for me. Luckily, I look in the room yesterday morning, just before going to the supermarket for things I would need today, a holiday. The arrangement was on the floor, bottom up. I scream. I pick it up and see that I had pushed everything well into the floral foam, and it's okay. No, it's not okay. The roses have been chewed.
I go into the hallway with the arrangement in my hand. My cat Anton sees me and immediately hides. I scream at him and he runs with eyes wide open, blue iris hidden in a sea of frightened black. I put the arrangement down, find him and grab him by the scruff of the neck. I push his nose into a rose, yell at him, "No!" and slap his ear. He gets the message and runs. Was I too harsh? No. I now had to buy five more roses at two euros a rose. He'll have to control his appetite for delicacies. He's the only one who likes to eat roses. The other two, Nuxca and Macarena don't have such refined tastes.
So, I go to the supermarket and the florist. I come back, rearrange the roses and mums, take them to the cemetery. I open the glass door and put the arrangement inside. Someone else has already been and left an arrangement on the ground in front of the panteón. I go to the village, collect three arrangements from the florist, where groups of people are beginning to line up to collect theirs. I leave two of the arrangements at my mother-in-law's and take one to my paternal grandmother. Every year I use my mother-in-law's house as an auxiliary point because it's right across the road from the florist's. That way, I don't have to drive with my car full of arrangements and have an apoplexy if everything falls over when I forget and take a curve with my usual panache.
After I come back from the neighboring parish, I collect the other two that go to our parish. I park at the church and take one arrangement way to the back, to my parents' niche. There, I arrange it with the one already left there. I admire some of the flowers already in place. I go back and get the one for my maternal grandmother's grave. She's in one of the few graves in the ground next to the church. Done with that part. Now I go home, make lunch, and make an arrangement for my maternal grandfather who's in yet another parish. Let's say my grandparents' marriage didn't end very well over sixty years ago.
When I turn off the fire under the pot, I go take this final arrangement. This cemetery, in Taragoña, is the largest in the township of Rianxo. There are many graves in the ground, all surrounded by tall panteóns. Two new sections have since been built, one of them very modern. In this cemetery, towards the top, there are also many small graves of children, most of whom died of disease and hunger seventy, eighty, ninety years ago. Or less. In this parish, too, you come across many who have died young. Some of the ages are sobering. People in their twenties, thirties, and forties smile at you from ceramic photographs forever fixed in time. Tomorrow when we visit the cemeteries in the afternoon, we will see them again, our yearly greeting.
The day hasn't finished yet, though. In the evening, after I finish my classes, I return to our cemetery. I take matches and light the paraffin lamp I placed in my parents' niche, to join the myriad of other candles and lights that have turned the cemetery one more year into a place of fairy lights. Halloween in not frightful here. It has returned to its roots, and we greet our dead again.
Monday I bought some roses and white chrysanthemums to make a floral arrangement to put in the niche where my parents are. Cemeteries here are the opposite of how we live. In rural Spain most people live in individual houses. When they die, they move to apartment block cemeteries. Each apartment house, or panteón, has between three and five flats, or niches. Sometimes two people share an apartment, but mostly they are singly occupied. This is because there are no rolling fields or hills upon which to keep spreading a cemetery like in the U.S. I remember visiting Forest Hills Cemetery near our house in Boston, and that was full of winding avenues and trees, like a very pleasant suburban subdivision. But in Europe there isn't enough land, so cemeteries surround the parish churches like streets of apartment blocks in the busiest cities. I arranged the roses and mums and left them in a back room to take on Tuesday morning to the cemetery, along with all the other professional arrangements I had asked a florist cousin to make for me. Luckily, I look in the room yesterday morning, just before going to the supermarket for things I would need today, a holiday. The arrangement was on the floor, bottom up. I scream. I pick it up and see that I had pushed everything well into the floral foam, and it's okay. No, it's not okay. The roses have been chewed.
I go into the hallway with the arrangement in my hand. My cat Anton sees me and immediately hides. I scream at him and he runs with eyes wide open, blue iris hidden in a sea of frightened black. I put the arrangement down, find him and grab him by the scruff of the neck. I push his nose into a rose, yell at him, "No!" and slap his ear. He gets the message and runs. Was I too harsh? No. I now had to buy five more roses at two euros a rose. He'll have to control his appetite for delicacies. He's the only one who likes to eat roses. The other two, Nuxca and Macarena don't have such refined tastes.
So, I go to the supermarket and the florist. I come back, rearrange the roses and mums, take them to the cemetery. I open the glass door and put the arrangement inside. Someone else has already been and left an arrangement on the ground in front of the panteón. I go to the village, collect three arrangements from the florist, where groups of people are beginning to line up to collect theirs. I leave two of the arrangements at my mother-in-law's and take one to my paternal grandmother. Every year I use my mother-in-law's house as an auxiliary point because it's right across the road from the florist's. That way, I don't have to drive with my car full of arrangements and have an apoplexy if everything falls over when I forget and take a curve with my usual panache.
After I come back from the neighboring parish, I collect the other two that go to our parish. I park at the church and take one arrangement way to the back, to my parents' niche. There, I arrange it with the one already left there. I admire some of the flowers already in place. I go back and get the one for my maternal grandmother's grave. She's in one of the few graves in the ground next to the church. Done with that part. Now I go home, make lunch, and make an arrangement for my maternal grandfather who's in yet another parish. Let's say my grandparents' marriage didn't end very well over sixty years ago.
When I turn off the fire under the pot, I go take this final arrangement. This cemetery, in Taragoña, is the largest in the township of Rianxo. There are many graves in the ground, all surrounded by tall panteóns. Two new sections have since been built, one of them very modern. In this cemetery, towards the top, there are also many small graves of children, most of whom died of disease and hunger seventy, eighty, ninety years ago. Or less. In this parish, too, you come across many who have died young. Some of the ages are sobering. People in their twenties, thirties, and forties smile at you from ceramic photographs forever fixed in time. Tomorrow when we visit the cemeteries in the afternoon, we will see them again, our yearly greeting.
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