Though I was fortunate to do some traveling as a child, once my parents divorced when I was 8, many of my “travels” were vicarious in nature. Once a year, my mom would schedule a child-free ladies’ getaway, usually with her youngest sister, my Aunt Ellen. Once she returned home from these jaunts, she would collect all the glossy 3-by-5-inch prints from the local film developer and painstakingly type up quippy captions on her word processor to be preserved in an album.
Some of these trips were legendary, living on in her always-lively tales to friends over glasses of wine, or in those photo albums I would pore over as a girl and dream of the day I could take trips like that myself.
One March 1992 trip to Puerto Vallarta stands out in memory: My mom and aunt, laughing together in various stages of tequila-enhanced silliness, double-daring each other to pose with pineapples in suggestive ways. She also captured golden sunsets and the streets of Puerto Vallarta bleached of color the way 35-millimeter cameras always seemed to do. “Things of beauty everywhere,” she typed underneath a photo of the Triton and Nereida statue on the Malecón, installed just two years prior.
A photo book chronicles adventures around Puerto Vallarta. Cynthia J. Drake photo
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Later in the album, there was a series of photos of my Aunt Ellen reclining in the ocean, smiling as the waves splashed around her. My mom captioned these: “Sometimes in lands far away, when the sun is just right and the ocean is very warm and playful, a little girl is released to remember … and enjoy … and rejoice. And her sister shares it and captures it and is truly blessed.”
When my mom died suddenly of a heart attack on Nov. 9, 2013, at the age of 64, my Aunt Ellen and I were both in shock. Truthfully, though a decade has passed since then, we still struggle. We lean on each other in our grief, and though we both live in different states (she is in Northern Virginia and I’m in Austin), we still make it a point to share lots of memories of my mom, who we agree was one of the wildest and most adventurous women we’ve ever known.
Flash forward to November 2023, nearing the 10-year anniversary of my mom’s death: I’ve been working as a travel writer for several years now and I’ve chosen to travel to Puerto Vallarta to finally experience a Día de los Muertos celebration in Mexico firsthand. I have traveled to Puerto Vallarta many times over the years and have not thought of my mom’s epic vacation there in a long time.
Downtown Puerto Vallarta Día de los Muertos celebration at the cemetery in November 2023. Cynthia J. Drake photo
My trip takes place with a small group of other travel writers gathered at the Marriott Puerto Vallarta, and the itinerary is filled with events centered around Day of the Dead. The first day, I walk out onto my room balcony, gazing at the ocean sparkling in the sunshine and am filled with gratitude. I always feel particularly connected to my mom when I visit the ocean, and this day is no different. “Hi Mom,” I say in my head when I finally get my toes in the wet sand. “I miss you. What’s new?”
Marriott Puerto Vallarta in November 2023. Cynthia J. Drake photo
In the late afternoon of Nov. 2, we are whisked downtown to visit the local cemetery, where local families are gathered on chairs around loved ones’ headstones freshly decorated with ribbons and carnations. Balancing plates heaped with food, there is lots of laughter as tourists weave in and out. We make our way along a parade route from here to the Malecón. Brightly colored papel picado waves from trucks, music blares from speakers. I try a drink from a local vendor called a tuba, made with coconut juice and vinegar, which is effervescent and refreshing in the fall heat.
Cynthia J. Drake at downtown Puerto Vallarta Día de los Muertos celebration in November 2023. Cynthia J. Drake photo
Later in the evening, we gather back at our hotel, now transformed into what I can only describe as a fever dream—it feels like something that could only exist in a dream. In the center of the hotel’s main back patio is a raised platform dripping with marigold garlands that sway in the breeze. Several catrinas, outfitted in the most stunning paper-flower-covered gowns, dance around in circles. The heat from candles placed on all the tables makes me sweat through my Day of the Dead face paint, which was beautifully applied to half of my face by a local makeup artist at the hotel. All around us are altars created by hotel staff members. They have asked us for photos of loved ones who have passed so they can display them with other ofrendas.
I make my way to each altar, enchanted by the traditional Mexican folk songs coming from a live mariachi band, and find my mom’s photo of her and her late husband Carl smiling at me next to photos of old Mexican movie stars and people’s beloved pets. Seeing her here feels somehow like it was meant to be, in a way I can’t explain. It is similar to the way that spreading her ashes in our favorite vacation spot in Michigan several months later also felt pre-ordained.
A woman nearby asks me about the photo, and I tell her probably more than she wanted to know about my mom. “She will visit you in your dreams tonight,” the woman says. My mom rarely visits me in my dreams, but I respond hopefully anyway. I am undecided about matters related to fate, but I do want to remain open to possibilities.
Día de los Muertos festivities at Marriott Puerto Vallarta in November 2023. Cynthia J. Drake photo
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The rest of the night moves in a kind of slow trance. In spite of the heat, I drink thick, hot atole, nibble on several tacos, pose with the catrinas, and try to take it all in with my camera. We head back to our rooms, and I sleep well—but I am a little sad that when morning comes, I don’t remember any of my dreams.
Several months later, I’m spending time with my Aunt Ellen and she pulls out some old photo albums. I recognize the one capturing that Puerto Vallarta trip she and my mom took some 30 years earlier, when she was the same age I am now. As I page through the album, suddenly I start recognizing the locations in a new way. Time and renovations have changed the hotel originally called Marriott Casa Magna, but now I see the same lobby of the Marriott Puerto Vallarta that greeted me in November 2023, captioned with: “The foyer of our hotel was always a most welcome sight, no matter what entrance we used!” I even recognized the aforementioned pineapples from the hotel’s famously potent Coco Loco cocktail. My mom and I had visited the same hotel three decades apart. And according to Day of the Dead beliefs, she had returned with me on that night that felt like a living dream.
A photo book reveals that Cynthia J. Drake and her mom stayed at the same hotel, decades apart. Cynthia J. Drake photo
This isn’t the first time I’ve realized I’ve been traveling in my mother’s footsteps. I’ve discovered her postcards from Barcelona and emails she sent from Corfu, Greece, and St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands, after traveling to those places myself. I read her observations and think of the unexpected ways memory dances with the present whenever people travel. I experience these destinations through my mother’s eyes and my own, and somehow our shared experiences, separately and together, give these places a new meaning. We have started to create new stories, my mom and I.
