I Don't Even Speak Spanish To Be Honest

For some reason, I really, REALLY love Dia De Los Muertos, which is a Spanish holiday for the dead pretty much.  At first, I just really liked the designs; I mean, c'mon, they're taking something that is depicted as evil and gruesome and are giving it colors, happiness, new life--and I really like that.  There's a deeper kind of meaning in it, and it intrigues me a lot.

Once I had begun seeing all of the colorful skeletons, I wondered what they were for, so I did some research and found out it was for the "Day of the Dead", and, upon reading a couple articles, found out it's to celebrate their lost loved ones with parties, and it usually lasts a couple days.  It was that moment that it became one of my favorite holidays (even though we don't really celebrate it here in the U.S.), because they changed the way they look at death.  Instead of mourning over someone they loved, they celebrate and remember all of the good times they had with said person.  They don't cry tears of sadness, they cry tears of joy.  They take the one thing that brings you so much emotional pain, and made it into something cheerful instead, which is amazing.  I honestly do kind of wish we had some kind of holiday like that here.  We could set off a couple days out of the year to just throw a party and have fun in honor of all of the fallen soldiers who gave their lives, all of the elderly who grasped onto life as long as they could, all of the sick children who underwent so many surgeries and hospital care, all of those depressed and stressed teens who took their own life because they felt like they couldn't take any of it anymore.  If we took just a few days--maybe even just one--to honor everybody out there who isn't with us anymore, then I think that'd be amazing.  I know some people would think this would be weird, and it probably sounds like I'm saying we should celebrate their deaths, but I'm not.  I'm saying that instead of grieving their death, let's celebrate their life.