Published by The i Paper (3rd November, 2025)
My gorgeous daughter died a year ago this week. So what a strange time to be in Mexico amid the annual Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) festival, arriving the day after what would have been her 32nd birthday to find decorations going up across the country to celebrate this world-famous event. Windows being garlanded with orange marigolds, doors festooned with colourful sheets of paper cut into patterns, markets selling decorated sugar skulls and skeletons seemingly everywhere.
Given my grief, which sits heavy on my soul and erupts in waves of sadness at unexpected times, I felt nervous returning to Mexico at such a time for two concerts with Africa Express, the collaborative music collective that I co-founded. But touring the album we made last year with some amazing local artists helped lift my spirits in the summer. And now I am glad to be here since the festivities that evolved from mystical Aztec traditions offer buttoned-up Brits a valuable lesson about death.
As a nation, we treat death almost as taboo in our atomised society, despite its grim inevitability and the morbid fascination of our Victorian predecessors living in an age of higher mortality rates. Now most lives end hidden away in institutions such as care homes, hospitals and hospices, meaning citizens can live decades without seeing a corpse, in contrast to many other parts of our planet. Polls indicate Britons find death a difficult issue to discuss, with many avoiding any talk of it.
This stigma stops people making preparations for the end of their time on earth, which can fuel struggles for their grieving families. It can also have traumatic consequences – as highlighted last year by a report from the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman into how this reluctance to discuss death stopped doctors, patients and families making dignified and informed choices about end-of-life care, especially for older citizens and people with learning disabilities – as exposed by the pandemic. The hospice movement even runs a campaign to help foster a culture for people to feel more comfortable talking about death, dying and grief.
In Mexico, however, the most famous festival centres on death. It is far removed from Halloween or Hollywood’s imagery – although bizarrely, a fictional parade with floats and grisly costumes shown a decade ago in a James Bond film chase led the state to create a similar annual event in the country’s capital.
Despite its name – and all those skeletons and skulls on display – Día de Muertos is neither sombre nor spooky. It is a joyful celebration of departed people (and sometimes even pets) with food, drink and music as their spirits supposedly revisit for a night. Children look forward to it, families build shrines called ofrendas in their homes filled with flowers and dotted with the deceased’s favourite items, parties are thrown at cemeteries.
One friend – a film-maker whose father died in his arms four years ago – told me how he sits at his ofrenda playing his dad’s favourite music while enjoying a shot of his beloved tequila and remembering their good times together.
Emilio admitted that he sometimes felt guilty for going weeks without thinking much about his deceased parent, speaking movingly to me about how easy it was to let precious memories drift away amid busy lives. So he loved this annual festival to sit there chatting, drinking and listening to music with his late father again, a reminder of their bond and happy times together.
I was struck by this conversation. The sadness at loss of a child is intense, leaving a hole that will never be filled. Iona had profound health issues and disabilities, yet living under the dark shadow of possible death for three decades does not ease the pain. For all her problems, terrible epileptic seizures and her need for 24-hour care, she was a happy woman. She taught me much about life, loved music and being outside in the wind, and brought joy to people who saw the sweet-natured person beyond the disabilities.
I miss holding her small hand, the clumsy hugs, the sly smile spreading on her face after pretending to be cross when I returned from a job abroad. Yet as Emilio said, memories can fade quickly and life moves on fast, even if the tears still flow easily. Sometimes I struggle to recall her precise smell, her smile, her touch. I talk to her in her flat created in the basement of our house – where her toothbrush still sits by the sink and pink coat still hangs on a peg – but I fear that as years pass it will become harder to cling to all the details of her character and retain the recollections I want to store in my head.
So I built an ofrenda for Iona in my rented flat to participate in this lovely tradition to remember the departed. It has the vivid marigolds seen everywhere on the streets, strings of skeleton-studded tinsel and red velvet balls, some pan de muerto orange-flavoured bread and skeletal figurines – including one to represent our dead family dog. Last night I ate her adored chocolate cake placed there while playing some of her favourite songs – and a sticky sugar skull filled with green goop I suspect she would have loved – as I prepare to return for the dreaded anniversary of her death.
Día de Muertos feels familiar from films, television and commercials, while that parade has grown rapidly into a major tourist draw for this troubled but fabulous country. Yet this festival remains for most Mexicans an intimate family moment to remember deceased loved ones and reflect on the lives of those they have lost by welcoming them back into their homes for a night and contemplating on their continuing place in their hearts.
And for all the incredible colour and exuberance, this celebration – when even children commune with ghosts of the dead – reminds everyone that whether we like it or not, death is a central part of human life.