One of the things I love about travel is how it makes me see my own culture in a new way. New Mexico’s highly decorated cemeteries were a sharp contrast to the cemeteries of my youth.

When I was growing up, we went to pay respects to the dead once a year on or around Memorial Day in late May. My mom picked flowers that were blooming at that time of year to make bouquets for the graves of her dad and other long-gone relatives.

We didn’t linger long at the grave-site but as we drove through the cemetery my parents pointed out the graves of other relatives I had never known, who were also buried there. Being related to a large percentage of the population in the small town where I grew up, there were a lot of relatives’ graves for my parents to point out.

Gravestones stood in well-defined rows, plain and dignified most of the year. Only on Memorial Day weekend did plastic flowers, wreathes and vases brighten up the stark landscape. Flowers and memorials that weren’t removed promptly after Memorial Day disappeared a few weeks after Memorial day and the cemetery returned to it’s typical dignified decor.

“I have always enjoyed cemeteries. Altars for the living as well as resting places for the dead, they are entryways, I think, to any town or city, the best places to become acquainted with the tastes of the inhabitants, both present and gone.”
― Edwidge Danticat, After the Dance: A Walk Through Carnival in Jacmel, Haiti

The riotous colors and creative sculptures that adorned graves in New Mexico were a sharp contrast to my midwestern expectations. Everywhere I looked I saw crosses commemorating a loved one, plastic flowers, wild sunflowers, and creative sculptures adorned gravesites. Gone were the orderly rows of gravestones. Instead there was a patchwork of graves, some enclosed by a fence, with no particular order that I could discern.

Vive la différence!

It was a colorful celebration of love for those who passed on, a different way of honoring the dead. I found it moving and beautiful.

Next time you travel, notice and appreciate the different ways we live.

May you walk in beauty.