Having to let go—of friends, loved ones, relationships, and more—is an all too familiar experience as we grow older.  Honoring the presence, impact and passing of important people in our lives is the point of Dia de Los Muertos. 

Suzanne LaFetra’s moving essay is ostensibly about Day of the Dead.  But, she has poignantly expressed how it feels as the losses of not only people, but other important bits of our lives, accumulate with every passing year.  Although, I’ve never created a Day of the Dead altar, this essay has inspired me to begin next November 1.

Late autumn sunlight slants through the arched windows in my Berkeley living room as I unpack a trunk full of grinning papier-mache skeletons, sticky white skulls of pressed sugar, the decorations for my Day of the Dead altar.

Every year my altar is different, and every year I wonder what it will hold in the future. I set out pictures of the family ghosts and ask: Next year will I sprinkle marigold petals across a photo of my father? What losses lie ahead? How many funerals will I attend in the future?

Nineteen years ago, I built my first altar for Dia de los Muertos. That year, it held the collar of my dog, Coyoacan, who had died from a snakebite. Then my grandmother's picture joined the incense and marigolds.  Over the years, I've added the keys to a failed business, a newspaper from Sept. 11, a picture of our gray kitty and, this year, my wedding ring.  Each year, my altar grows more crowded, the flowers tucked around memories of what is no more.

The flowers are wrapped in cones of newspaper, and I tear the first one open, to see headlines of the war. For the soldiers, I've bought pussywillows, for their mothers, baby's breath and olive branches, prayers of forgiveness and peace. I slip spiny artichokes and sharp thistles into a vase. War is making my altar spikier, more dangerous.

I slice open the cellophane holding 'Black Baccara' roses, their fingernail-size buds an eerie blackish purple. These are for Julien, my friend Naomi's 3-year-old son, who died of leukemia on a perfect spring morning. I shear away the thorns and poke skinny stems into a thin necked vase. To this I add baby's breath, a flower I dislike, but somehow, I felt the altar needed it this year, that Naomi needed it this year, that maybe I needed it this year. Julien's death is making my altar more ominous.

I put a folded piece of paper at the back of the altar: an ovulation chart. My family is complete, I am past 40 now, and there will be no more babies. There will be only older children, then teenagers, then adults, then silences between phone calls. I slip stems of pussywillows in a copper vase, blue with age. Then I tuck in tuberose, so sweet smelling it's almost unpleasant. My children growing up is making my altar more complicated.