Día de Muertos is a Mexican holiday celebrated throughout Mexico, in particular the Central and South regions, and by people of Mexican heritage elsewhere. The multi-day holiday involves family and friends gathering to pray for and remember friends and family members who have died, and helping support their spiritual journey. In Mexican culture, death is viewed as a natural part of the human cycle. Mexicans view it not as a day of sadness but as a day of celebration.

And now let us come to Halloween, a festival which I have seen sometimes being celebrated in my country. I have witnessed the dark, dull painted scary faces of little children, their teeth painted red and their eyes done a smokey eyeshadow. I have seen the carved out pumpkin heads  (rarely though) and even though I have never celebrated this festival in particular but I have still given the entire lot of my candies to these little ghosts on my doorstep and never said trick only to keep these little beings away from intruding inside my house through windows and I do not know from where and I have also seen their gleaming happiness masked behind that deadly white, red and black paint. 

But why be happy? Why celebrate the death;the end, the ultimate misfortune of everyone with the sweets. Why rejoice? Why remember it? WHY? WHY? WHY? Before you answer me this answer by surfing the internet or precisely wikipedia which you will get easily :); I want to ask a deeper question. 

“What is death? What is the fear of it? I had asked these questions to myself. I have in literal terms gone deeper inside my soul scavenging to answer these questions which was scary. Not long ago I had lost many people around me, the ones I loved, the ones I had always cherished. And there was this day when my life came crashing down. I had lost this one person in my life to whom I had talked, let me be clear :  seen just a day before the news. A person who I always saw smiling and whose smile was contagious, a person who never let anyone sulk, a person who had a lot of hardships but never did cried about one, never talked about one. A person whom I looked up to every day. A person who was so young. 

One morning when I woke up to the sounds of the sweet chirps of the bird, that day someone told me that the bird which kept my heart bright was now resting in peace forever. I cried that day and I could not believe it. I always expected that this was always a prank and that the person will again come, and I could again see the same eyes with that radiance and that charisma. My heart is still devoid of that voice I yearn for again even after months and because of that incident I developed a fear, a fear of death.

I don’t know if I have thanatophobia since no one really believes it but I know it has affected me. I have had dreams of my grave being dug out and I hate listening to my heart beats because of the fear that it will stop. 

I have fantasized how and when I will die and as if how I will cease to nothingness, I have dwelled very deep in this dark word of death and like everyone even I feel it is dark, black and still we know it is a truth which cannot be covered. I fear being alone because who will take me into a hospital if something happens to me.This changed my life, I was broken and I still have those scars and I am pretty sure we all do, we all have experienced that pain. Today as if now, I am fine, I am with my family, I am blessed, but I will and will not ever forget this pain.

And then I asked more questions. Why live if I have to die? Why to do anything if one day people are going to forget me and say RIP with two crying emojis. Why be here in the first place if everything is going to end. I did not get all the answers to this and to some I got, I am not sure.

But now let us come to this important point: Why death? Why celebrate death, Why is death important? How did this death impact me? What did this change for me? Ask this question to yourself, I plead again and again : ASK

In this time, what have I learned? I tried to understand life. I am not saying I understood life, I tried to understand life. I accepted this death and realised that this cliche saying : Oh my god why am I alive. I just want to die; is not acceptable. I realised that memories are important, I realised that basking out in the sun with your loved one and playing a game of basketball is important more than that stupid project do not get me wrong; they are important, your work is important but I have seen people just exisitng as Oscar Wilde rightly said: To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people just exist that's all. People are doing projects running on the sounds of clock and still never live.Do your work sincerely but remember that you have something very important to do. You have to live. you have laugh and cry with your family, you have to do something more than just exisitng. I realised that I will not have a perfect life but what I need is a satisfactory one.  I need to give love and I want love because time is really really short. 

This incident changed me from a time waster to an early bird. A too stressed one from a going and moving on one, a person who started valuing, friends, family, laughters, smile, the beautiful raindrops and the warm sunshine and each morning even more. It changed me into a more spiritual one, to a person who values experience more, it forced me to get up everyday and I learned a very harsh truth : No will care when I die and no one should care. 

But not everything was rosy. The word death still scares me away and I still brood because of that fear. 

And this is the reason we celebrate this death, this fear. Because this fear of the unknown compels us to live a fearless life, to live way more than what we did. It reminds us of our short time and urges us to do something we want, it warns us not to have regrets in our deathbed, it tells us to leave a beautiful trail of light even when we are breaking because when we go people shouldn’t mourn but wish like that of a shooting star. Those scary pumpkins are our reminder of this cause and those sweets the reminder of the LIFE which we have to live not waste. 

After all your future achievements and your past mistakes are both the rising sun and the gone moon which have no meaning right now. Life is right now, passing minute by minute with every breath. 

So as till now you must have found out why we celebrate death. Yes, it is to celebrate happiness not sadness because our loved ones awaken and we celebrate with them. It is just a day to think of all the memories you have ever had together, the days you have lived together,the hope that they are never truly gone because eternal connections are never lost, never forgotten. This fear of death is a fact, this death teaches us that we are fearing for something which we are going to face, instead just plunge right in for your dreams, for your aspirations and remember the brightest star you see is that connection you will cherish.

At the end it is just a DAY OF THE DEAD; a DAY OF THE TRUTH.

Halloween is not a celebration of death, it is a celebration of the memories, of our past, of our loved ones. It is celebrating the moments we have lived together. It is celebrating the truth of this universe, it is celebrating the reminder of our short life, the awakening of life and celebration is always done with laughter and sweets.