A spider, very vivid, has nailed the net into the forest. The tree releases the dead leaf and gets caught in the net. A ray of sunshine illuminates the leaf, and the wind's caress makes the leaf dance. Life sustains death in a soft, bright, sweet and beautiful dance.

It hasn't been so long since we died at home, guarded by the housekeepers and breathed the last day between the housekeepers. It has not been so long since he was watching at home, since he was crying at home and was last dismissed from the deceased. One of the volumes of the Ethnographic Atlas of the Basque Country of Labayru (Moments of death in the Basque Country) gathers the customs that have existed around death. This is a fieldwork carried out in 85 villages, of seven territories, led by José Miguel de Barandiaran and Ander Manterola. Many researchers participated in the preparation of the book. It is a deep and long work that is divided into three main parts: the pre-death preparations; the agony associated with death, death, the passage through death or things related to the destiny of the soul; and the post-mortem, how the mourning was expressed in the houses, how the notification of death was made, how the dead was poisoned...

The book collects, above all, information related to the rites of the Catholic Church, and since society has turned its back on it, we have been orphans of the instruments to treat death with dignity. We died in hospitals, often surrounded by strangers or alone, fired family and friends in cold evenings that are outside the village, and in many cases there is no proper collective greeting. We store and eat the tears, only with individual duels.

Apart from a model that is no longer worth us, the creation of new forms can be more difficult than you think – with exceptions, civil funerals have been made in Eibar for a long time, for example – but it can also be a unique opportunity to work creation. I'm going to give you some of the questions that have been asked in my training with Gemma Polo and Sophia Style: How do you want to die? What do you have to do to prepare this last trip? Who are you? What are your fears? What burial is yours?

The above questions have reminded me of my grandmother's death. It was the first death I saw directly. The mother's cousin came from Oñati to say goodbye to the grandmother and to make us company. I wasn't hungry yet, and I made a tortilla for each one, as if I didn't let myself be fooled. We shared our memories of the grandmother in laughter and crying, until she darkened. My mother got into bed, and I fell asleep fast. I slept then in the bed next to my grandmother. Our cousin sat at the bank and stayed awake for the next few hours. Suddenly, something woke me up. My mother was in the bedroom. Our cousin was also still there. I looked at my mother and grabbed her by the hand. He breathed the last two steps and it's over. Nothing changed, but everything changed. Dolores left us sad and empty when he left, but we remember with affection that moment. It was accompanied by those we loved, in a warm, peaceful environment.

The communities linked to the earth know that death is a change, that is, that more deaths are synonymous with life than before. These groups integrate death as part of life through stories and rites and actions inherited from the oral tradition. The book My life on the road by feminist activist Gloria Steinem reads as follows: “It’s no wonder that the oral history is more rigorous than the written one. The first is told by many people who lived and the second is written by a few people who have not had that experience.”

Look what happens to my grandfather's grandfather (Txo eta Txalaparta, 2022). Grandpa and granddaughter Gloria go to the beach every day. The elderly lose their skills every day, leaving them on the beach: strength, flexibility, sight, agility, hearing, memory… That is not known by Gloria. However, because of his old age, he has decided to stop going to the beach with his grandfather.

One day, her grandfather, a person with a great sense of humor, dies smiling, surrounded by her loved ones. Gloria, later, begins to go to the beach with her little brother, where she finds everyone her grandfather has left: teeth, sight, agility, strength… With humor, writer Glòria Granell Barbera brings a simple but profound idea about life and death. The author is able to bring oral tradition and cycling, with a modern and original proposal.

Religion, philosophy, science, anthropology, biology, medicine… In all disciplines people have tried to explain what death is. But, from the point of view in which he is being looked at, there is always something missing. Death has that thing that gives it an air of mystery. I wondered if the discipline that best explains death is not literature: a tablespoon of reality, a hundred milliliters of fiction, well mixed and vulgar! A little bit of likelihood goes up to the symbolic level and the magic: more questions emerge unanswered. Isn't that death?