The Dedalus Log

“Dia de los Muertos is the one day of the year
We get to celebrate the family
who aren’t with us anymore.
It’s like we’re throwing a party
and everyone we love is invited”.
(Disney’s Elena of Avalor: A Day to Remember – 2016)

Prisa brought her two girls, Sarah and Grace, over last month to spend the night. Her husband Joe was supervising a high school football game at a nearby school and she arranged for all of them to spend the night with us. It’s always a treat to have the girls over this early in the fall. The weather is temperate and the pool is readily available for afternoon and evening swims. The girls exhaust themselves in the water, making them very susceptible for an early dinner, video, and bed. This evening both girls were very eager to see the latest installment of the Disney Channel cartoon series, Elena of Avalor. Elena is an animated TV series of a Hispanic, Spanish speaking, teenaged princess who rules a mythical island. Each episode includes simple, catchy songs, or moral lessons. It reminded me of a more sophisticated version of an earlier animated TV series that Sarah watched as a two-year old, called Dora the Explorer, that also had a Hispanic, bilingual heroine. However, Prisa seemed particularly interested in her girls watching this latest episode, because it dealt with Dia de los Muertos, The Day of the Dead.



Dia de los Muertos is a uniquely Mexican festival, or holiday, celebrated on November 2, which coincides with the Catholic feast day of All Souls Day. This is the final event of the 3-day series of secular and religious celebrations that begin with Halloween (All Hallow’s Eve) on October 31, and All Saints Day, on November 1. But, I was curious as to why Prisa was so insistent that the girls watch it? I assumed it would simply be a reminder of their Mexican ancestry and culture. This hypothesis proved wrong. The underlying message of the episode was addressed very early in the story with the singing of the principal song, The Festival of Love:

Dia de los Muertos
Is my favorite day.
We honor all our loved ones
Who have passed away.

We go to the graveyards
Build altars in their name.
Share our memories of them
By the candle flame.

Dia de los Muertos
The one day of the year.
We bake up treats so tasty
To fill us with good cheer.
Sugar skulls and sweet bread
Are made with love and care,
Then brought down to the altar
For everyone to share.

This is the day we all await.
This is the day we celebrate.
The Festival of Love,
The Festival of Love.

Dia de los Muertos
Means more to me this year,
Since Mami and Papi
Are no longer here.
But I’m not feeling sad now,
I’m feeling joy inside.
Because this festival
Keeps their memory alive.

This is the day we all await.
This is the day we celebrate.
The Festival of Love,
The Festival of Love.
(Dia de los Muertos: Elenor of Avalor – 2016)


I have to admit that I was a bit teary by the end of the song. The lyrics of the last stanza before the final refrain had brought up a flood of images and memories of family members who have passed away recently: my father-in-law, the Doctor, my Aunt Espie, and my Uncle Fausto – but especially my Uncle Pepe, who had just died that week. A few months ago, I was forced to cancel a trip to Mexico to celebrate his 90^th birthday because he had suffered a stroke, and had rescheduled a flight for December. I hoped to visit him before his condition worsened – but I was too late. Deaths that occur so far away, especially those we can’t attend their funerals, are difficult to process. In some way, because we never see or touch the remains or casket, they never really die. That was the way I still felt about my uncle. How does one remember those we have lost without also calling up the shock and pain of the separation, or coming to grips with the notion that they have ceased to exist? I could not. But Elena, in this episode showed my granddaughters through song and story how we can transcend the pain by celebrating their memories and keeping them alive in our hearts and minds every year.




I really admire Prisa as a parent, and respect her ability to use children’s television programming to introduce and reinforce proper values, behaviors, and traditions. I first got a glimpse of this when I saw Sarah watching Daniel Tiger, the PBS animated children’s series that guided behaviors through instructional songs and stories. Songs like “Grownups Come Back”, “Clothes on, Eat Breakfast, Brush Teeth, Put on Shoes, and Off to School”, and “Stop, Think, and Choose” were simple, easy to remember lessons that could be recalled and reinforced by parents through song and repetition. In this episode of Elena of Avelar, Prisa was clearly teaching a double lesson about death by introducing the Mexican tradition of Dia de los Muertos, and emphasizing the importance of keeping alive the memories of great-grandparents and other deceased relatives and friends. At the end of the program, we praised the story and its song, and Kathy made arrangements for a sleepover with Sarah on the following weekend of November 5^th, and then taking both girls to the Canoga Park street festival of Dia de los Muertos on Sunday, November 6.


Many native Angelenos are surprised to discover that Canoga Park (originally called Owensmouth) was one of the two original towns in the San Fernando Valley – the other being Van Nuys. Both towns were established circa 1911-1912 and they represented the East and West extremities of the Valley, and the focal points of its future development from agriculture to housing. Canoga Park, probably because of its greater distance from Los Angeles, managed to hold on to many aspects of a small town, along with a large resident Mexican-American community and neighborhood (or barrio) near its Old Town location along Sherman Way. These last vestiges of small town life can still be seen in its two November events: the Memorial Day Parade on November 11, and the Dia de los Muertos Street Festival on (or around) November 2.


Dia de los Muertos, the event central to the Elena of Avalor episode, is a Mexican celebration that fuses two cultures and traditions – the Catholicism of the Spanish empire and the indigenous civilizations in Mexico. Before the Europeans arrived, Indians had an understanding that the spiritual world and the material world were not separated. Those who were of the natural world had flesh, while those in the spiritual realm were fleshless, and depicted as skeletons (calaveras). The Catholic and indigenous traditions fused seamlessly in the religious feast day of All Souls, on November 2. Mexicans would often paint their faces, or half of the face, as skeletons. Families would create altars, with levels representing heaven and earth, to help remember loved ones who had passed away. Altars vary, but they usually include a photograph of the deceased, along with their favorite food, drink, and music. In Mexico and in the American Southwest, families gather at the cemeteries on the vigil, November 1, and decorate the gravesites. After the time at the cemeteries, families gather around their family altars at home and continue celebrating and sharing stories of their loved ones. I had gone to the Canoga Park Dia de los Muertos Festival on previous occasions, and had even taken my granddaughter Sarah when she was three-years old, but I had never really tied the festival, or the Mexican traditions, with our own families, or our deceased relatives. I hoped to change that on the night of Sarah’s sleepover with us. My plan was to build on the groundwork laid out in the Elena of Avalor episode with actual participation in the customs and traditions of Dia de los Muertos.





When Kathy brought Sarah home for her sleepover, we had prepared a full agenda of activities. We had purchased an early birthday gift since we would be out of town on the actual day, and we had prepared a craft project that would foreshadow our participation at the Dia de los Muertos Festival on Sunday. So, once Sarah had opened her wrapped oversized present to reveal a dynamically flexible scooter, and spent an hour breaking it in on the sidewalk of our cul de sac, we were ready to work. I laid out all the materials I had accumulated: an original Dia de los Muertos shadowbox we had purchased years ago, and wished to update; a large selection of wallet-sized photographs of recently, and long-time deceased family members; and a large collection of religious and Dia de los Muertos stickers and decorations. The idea was to construct two brand new Dia de los Muertos shadowboxes and decorate them as if they were part of an altar tradition. We wanted to tie this activity to the Elena of Avelor episode Sarah had watched with the Festival that would follow – concentrating on the most immediate family members who had passed away. Sarah loved the project and the assignment. On Sunday, reunited with her sister and parents, we celebrated Dia de los Muertos and went a little crazy. Sarah had always wanted her face painted in the Mexican tradition of calaveras, or skeletons. So as soon as the festival began at 10:00 am we were in line to have her face decorated. Of course, once Kathy and I saw her gorgeous calavera face and hair ribbon, we had to complement it with a dress styled in the china poblana fashion of Mexico. Sarah literally resembled the fashionable representation of the catrina figurines that are part of the Dia de los Muertos iconography. All of these activities were subsequently repeated with her sister Gracie, when she arrived at the festival with her parents.





All granddaughter sleepovers with daylong activities are wonderfully tiring for two old-timers like Kathy and me. At the conclusion of the day, when we are alone together and everything is quiet, we always look back at those moments with the girls and reflect on the day. On this occasion, however, I couldn’t help thinking again of my uncle Pepe.  I had slipped his photograph into one of the Dia de los Muertos shadowboxes we had made, and he still loomed large in my mind. I have two images of my uncle Pepe that have withstood time and age. They are both images from the awed perspective of a child that have never changed. Pepe, whose real name was Jose Manuel Villalpando Nava was a stylishly tall, slim man with refined, delicate features and wispy blondish hair. He always wore tailored suits with starched, long-sleeved, white shirts, and freshly shined shoes. He was a multi-talented intellectual in the classic Mexican and European style. He was a published Doctor of Pedagogy and a busy professor of Philosophy who also taught at the National Preparatory School and the Mexican Naval College (with a rank of naval commander). “El Profe”, as he was sometimes called within the family, was the archetype of the kind of man I dreamed of becoming, and I schemed at establishing closer ties, and a viable relationship with him. Since it was too late to make him my traditional Godfather (padrino) at baptism, I named him my padrino for Confirmation at age 14. However it wasn’t until 1970, at the age of 21, that I made a real connection with him during a two-month stay in Mexico City. All future encounters with Pepe never reached the level of that summer again, even during extended visits in Mexico. He would always make time for me during those subsequent visits, but the intimacy was never the same. In 1975 I invited him to be a part of my wedding as Father of the Groom, and he gave a very elegant and formal speech at the reception, one you would expect from a prominent scholar and author.




The last time I saw Pepe was when I attended a Family Reunion celebration in Mexico in 2009. The party was publicized as a combination birthday/reunion to attract as many family members as possible. I went as the sole representative of the American contingent. By then Pepe had retired from teaching and did very little writing. I was almost saddened about my decision to attend when I saw how he looked, and I only talked with him a bit. He was a bent and aging figure of a man in his declining years. He was often distracted, and his mobility was very limited, forcing him to spend most of the party seated and silently watching the movement and interactions around him. I would occasionally sneak sidelong glances at him, cursing the remorseless deterioration of aging.


In late October I received a phone call from my sister Estela with news of Pepe’s passing. She gave me few details, but I suspected that death was a result of a stroke he had suffered earlier. The sad news left me with a puzzling dilemma. I felt an overwhelming compulsion to write about Pepe, about what he meant to me and how much I loved him, but I was also hesitant about revealing too much. Any recollection of Pepe would have to center on the time we spent together in 1970. Yet the things I learned about him might be considered too revealing – especially for my mom. She, like all her now deceased sisters and mother, adored Pepe and never saw any faults or weakness. Yet it was those same human foibles that made him a real person to me, and not merely an idealized picture of the proper educator, intellectual, author, brother, and son. It was during this maelstrom of conflicting impulses that one of those graced moments of serendipity occurred. While driving I heard one of the songs on my iTunes list. It was K.D. Lang’s The Valley, from her album, Hymns of the 49^th Parallel. It’s a sad, haunting song that has always puzzled me about its point and purpose. Driving home alone I heard the lyrics in a new light, and they awakened my recollection of the second timeless image I have of Pepe:

                                                I love the best in you,
                                                You love the best in me,
                                                Though it is not always easy.
                                                Lovely? Lonely?
                                                We will walk,
                                                We will walk,
                                                In good company.

During one of our family’s earliest visits to Mexico, when I was still a child and Pepe a recently married young man, I remember my mother organizing a family trip to La Villa, the Old Cathedral that once housed the miraculous image of La Virgen de Guadalupe. The Sunday morning excursion would combine a pilgrimage to the shrine, a mass at the main altar in front of the image, and a family brunch at a downtown restaurant. After entering the crowded Cathedral and making our way to the front altar, I was stunned to recognize my uncle Pepe, kneeling meekly in back of the priest saying the Mass, while serving as his sole altar boy. There he was, this slim, handsome figure, wearing his tailored suit, and placing himself at the service of the Virgen and the Church. Gone was the pose of the cynical anti-cleric, or swaggering Mexican male, who criticized sermons and debunked religious formulas and superstitions. He was simply “un joven güero” placing himself at the call of his Church, Savior, and the Virgin Mary. He was a young man of Faith.




That was my relationship with my uncle, Jose Manuel Villalpando Nava, PhD. I loved the best of him, while recognizing the worst. It was not always easy because sometimes his opinions and prejudices got in the way. But, if I can paraphrase a quotation from St. Paul, “Love is patient, Love is kind, it does not dishonor others, and it keeps no record of wrongs. Love rejoices with the truth.” I rejoice in knowing that Pepe lived a full, happy life and that many, many people, especially his family, loved him. With his death, Pepe joins Mima, Carlos, Beto, Rorra, Helen, Chita, and Rosita in eternal peace. As K.D. Lang proclaimed in her song – he will walk in good company.



One never knows how much young children remember of family events or occasions, as they grow older. Will Sarah and Gracie remember what we did that weekend, what was said, and what they learned about Dia de los Muertos? Judging from conversations with our grown children, Toñito and Prisa, some events do manage to standout. Our hope is that Dia de los Muertos, with all its iconography, art, color, decorations and associations with deceased family members will survive. It’s a wonderful way to remember our religious and cultural heritage and faith that the spirit survives death, and that death itself is simply a transition to that place from which we all sprang. So on this Dia de los Muertos we renewed that faith, that hope, that expectation that we shall one day reunite with those we love, and once again, we will walk in good company.