Ziua Morţilor

It was already dark by the time we gathered at 6:15 tonight outside Kadie, Alice, and Lindsey’s apartment. Bundled in hats and gloves (with the exception of Zach, who never seems to wear anything but a hoodie), we met Andreea and her two-year-old son to walk over to the cemetery. Lupeni was bustling tonight. As we walked through town, past the big block apartments in various states of disrepair, we were surrounded by families and friends, little knots of people walking together in the evening chill, laughing and talking, carrying food and drinks in well-worn grocery bags and bunches of flowers in crinkly foil. Everyone in town, it seemed, was heading to the cemetery, or coming back from there. It’s November 1st, ziua morţilor: the day of the dead.

 

The cemetery was beautiful. Ordinarily it’s relatively empty, but tonight it was hopping, filled with families gathered around graves, remembering the lives of their loved ones who had passed away. Tombs were covered in flickering red candles and huge piles of flowers; long, narrow candles from the Orthodox churches smoldered in the dirt, left behind as tokens of past prayers. We wandered through the cemetery, listening to the ebb and flow of Romanian conversations around us, watching as women passed around homemade cakes, smelling the beer, hearing the familiar pop-fizz of large soda bottles opening… it was bustling. To me, the atmosphere didn’t seem sad. It wasn’t vaudeville; it wasn’t spooky. It was simply, well, Romanian: this charming mix of solemnity and irreverence. We passed a grave where a man was sitting and staring, his lips moving silently; at another grave, one woman dropped a cup full of alcohol on the ground and burst out laughing. It’s a personal thing—a time of remembrance which can look however the deceased would have wanted it to—but also a public event. That’s what made it so beautiful to me: as we passed through the cemetery, we were offered food and drink. People call out to each other; they visit other families’ graves. In the States, grief is usually a very individual and somber thing. In the Ziua Morţilor, grief is anything but solitary.

The event reminded me of another occasion this semester: our visit to the Cimitirul Vesel (“Merry Cemetery”) in Săpânţa, a small village in the far north of Romania. The Cimitirul Vesel is world-famous for its beauty: each tomb is adorned with a hand-carved blue cross, painted with a scene from the deceased’s life and a poem—often ironic, sometimes laugh-out-loud-funny, always poignant. (For example, read the following!)




... Să vă mai spun una bună                        ...Now I will tell you a good one
Mi-o plăcut ţuica de prună                             I kind of liked the plum ţuica
Cu prietenii la birt                                         With my friends at the pub
Uitam şi de ce-am venit!                               I used to forget what I came for!
 

In the Cimitirul Vesel, death is seen as an opportunity to celebrate the life that was lived, rather than a time of mourning and grief. Death is seen, in fact, as a joyful thing as we anticipate the better life to come. It’s a beautiful philosophy, and it’s reflected well in the cemetery. As we wandered through, I couldn’t help but smile. The stories captured in rhyme and paint seemed so alive, so real, that one couldn’t help but celebrate the great wealth of humanity represented there. What a beautiful thing.