Every
year Clementine and her father visited Angangueo to
honor her mother. On the mountain top, monarch butterflies hung from
Oyamel tree branches, thousands of them in pleated layers like
discarded quinceañera
dresses. During Dia de los Muertos, families gathered and brought
picnics and shared stories, memories of their loved ones. She watched
them laugh and weep and dance and eat while her father stood silently
by her side. Him in his black suit and her in a white dress with
ribbons that her niñera,
Maria, insisted she wear—the perfect little daughter. Her father's
grief was a silent and endless prayer between himself and God, a
conversation she was not a part of. So she waited and watched the
butterflies and the families, and wondered what it felt like to be
loved. (shiny bits in between, danaus).
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