Día de los Muertos

In Portugal on the 1st of November is holiday. We celebrate our deseased loved ones. Families adorn the graves of their deseased with flowers and candles, they reunite around the grave that day to listen the blessing from the priest to the dead ones and to pray and remember their beloved deseased. You visit graves of friends and family to pay respect to their memory, you leave flowers or a candle in the grave and talk and remember them with the other friends or family members that are around the grave doing the same... I remember to be at my grandparents grave and people coming and talking about them and how good people they were. My dad and his siblings talking about when they were kids and some funny story envolving them and my grandparents... I always liked to share about when my granddad told me stories from his youth as a shepherd... Being at their grave was like we were with them again, closer... and I always liked to tell them my news... Actually, even during the year I liked to go to their grave to visit and talk with them... In Portugal is very normal to visit the grave of your loved ones at least once a week to clean it, put flowers and light a candle. Is very normal to see the graves in Portugal with at least one candle always lit night and day. Is our way to remember them! My granddad passed first, so during almost 18 years my granny went to my grandad grave every day to check the candle and the flowers and every week cleaned it very well. When she was too old to do it every day, that started to be my auties job... Now, that they are both gone, my auties between them keep the grave always with flowers and candles. My mum likes to save the most beautiful flowers from our garden to send to my grandparents grave on the 1st of November. Having friends from Mexico I learned about their Dia de los muertos, which have some similarities with the Portuguese traditions. Since James passed I started to understand better my granny's visits to my grandad grave... James grave is in Devon, in the village where he grew up, so not near me... I cannot go there every day, nor every week... I still visit, a couple of times a year... I take flowers, his favourite beer, a blanket and I just stay there talking with him... Usually a take some food and a book with me and I am having a meal with him or reading my book with him (the blanket is for me to sit), once I even had a short nap there with him, like we used to do on lazzy weekends afternoons... My firend Mariella, that is from Mexico, told me about the altars they made at home for dia de los muertos, so this year I decided to do one for James, well, I actually had always kind of one since he passed (I needed to have a candle for him always lit, afterall I am Portuguese...). But this time I am doing it based in what I was told by my Mexican friend. I got Marigold flowers and monarch butterflies, fake from Amazon, but as we say in Portugal the intention is what matters... I will prepare some foods he liked and drinks and hope his soul will visit me and hear how much he is loved and never forgotten... Can this be true? I don't know, but it helps me to fell still connected with him and gives me hope of meeting him again one day... Do you have any traditions to help you to connect with your deseased loved ones?