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This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Longmont Museum’s popular and moving Dia de los Muertos exhibit. It might be a year when the community needs it more than ever.
This is especially true for Longmont’s oldest residents, who for many reasons are especially vulnerable during the coronavirus pandemic. Brandy Queen, seniors counselor and resource education coordinator at the Longmont Senior Center, described what she’s seeing: “Its been hard at the Senior Center. There have been weeks where it felt like every other day someone was dying. It’s tough for us not to be able to be together as a community.”
While such losses are tough on their own, social distancing and restrictions on group gathering sizes have changed the way memorial services and grieving support happens. Sara Beery, one of the center’s grief support group leaders, first identified this as an issue and said she wanted to find a way community members could hold some kind of gathering to honor those who died during the pandemic.
In response, the center has planned to place a memorial in the lobby when the building reopens, and has created online memorial listings and a listing in the Senior Center GO catalog. It also is creating an altar for the Longmont Museum’s Day of the Dead exhibit.
Senior Center staff is accepting items for its alter until Sept. 23. Those who want to contribute items to the altar or participate in other memorials can download and complete a request form at bit.ly/longmontmemorialproject.
Queen said so far she’s had inquiries about participation from those who wanted to talk about their loved one and from one person who wanted to add a poem, which was either about someone they knew or about the overall impacts of the pandemic. She’s also heard from a nursing home that wants to participate.
Queen is emphatic when she talks about the purpose of the activities.
“It started out about COVID, but what we very quickly realized is that this is actually about everyone who has lost someone and hasn’t been able to have a memorial service,” she said.
The altar will allow friends and family of the deceased to come into a public space, at a social distance, and remember their loved ones.
Each year, the Dia de los Muertos celebration is a widely anticipated event. Last year nearly 6,000 people attended an outdoor festival, while another 2,000 attended the exhibit. This is vastly different from how the event started. Ann Macca, the Museum’s curator of education, said that its first year, in 2001, the event was designed to reach audiences the Museum hadn’t reached before. “We were lucky to get 30 people."
An altar at the 2018 Dia de los Muertos exhibit at the Longmont Museum. (Photo by Matt Steininger)Each year since, the Museum has taken special care to create an authentic experience.
“It’s about cultural appreciation, not appropriation,” Macca said. To her, it has always been a community experience, a celebration of life and a connection to those who came before.
The public can participate in a number of ways. The in-person Day of the Dead celebration has shifted to an online format from 2:30 to 4 p.m. Nov. 1. Community members can connect to the event by picking up free celebration supply kits. More information is available on the Museum’s website.
The Day of the Dead exhibit at the Museum opens Oct. 2.
The Museum’s connection with the Senior Center is an extension of other community outreach efforts tied to the exhibit.
“The community work that Senior Services staff performs is essential to our community. Working with them in this exhibition helps ensure the museum’s work connects with their clients,” Macca said.
