Ancestors and memory

Plants on graves and altars are the oldest language of remembrance: a wreath, a bunch of flowers, candles among greenery. The catalogue lists two species under this topic that both carry exactly that role — Mexican tarragon from the Mexican Day of the Dead, and bay laurel, the tree of wreaths and graves of the ancient Mediterranean.

The Mexican marigold (cempasuchil, a relative of the garden marigold) covers the altars and the paths to the graves on the Day of the Dead with an orange colour meant to lead the souls home; the laurel wreath lay on the graves of poets and soldiers from Greece to today's memorials. It is symbolism, not herbalism, and the page treats it that way.

Rituals of remembrance are studied by the psychology of grief, not by pharmacology: it is documented that a shared ritual — visiting a grave, an anniversary, a meal that is talked about — helps carry grief and give it shape. The plant in it is a sign and a scent, not an active substance.

Mexican tarragon and bay laurel have only laboratory pharmacological data, and these do not bear on this topic. That a scent can call up a memory more strongly than an image is one of the few well-documented findings about smell — and exactly why plants on graves make sense.

Grief has no deadline and needs no treatment; what needs it is a state in which, months on, grief still stops the ordinary day — a person does not go to work, does not sleep, does not eat, sees no point. That is called complicated grief, and psychotherapy has documented approaches for it.

Thoughts of going after the one who died are a reason to call now: a crisis line, or emergency services when life is in danger. Alcohol as an aid to grieving prolongs grief; it does not shorten it. A flower on a grave is fine; loneliness no one knows about is not.