Dia de los Muertos

Rio Grande Valley native Macarena Hernandez has a nice column about the Day of the Dead that came out in Friday's Dallas Morning News.

An excerpt:

When I was in college, I attended a professor's funeral in Waco. When the service was over, I stayed in my seat, as everyone else headed home. I thought the crowd would come back to watch her coffin lowered into the ground. Instead, a bulldozer was nearby.

At most Mexican funerals I've attended, women wail openly, and goodbyes are long. You toss the traditional fistful of dirt onto the coffin after it has been lowered into the ground. Gravediggers, usually relatives, shovel the dirt until the coffin is buried and the flowers arranged on the fresh mound.

Hernandez used to cover the Valley for the San Antonio Express-News, before taking a job as editorial writer and columnist with the Dallas paper.