The professor quoted is the mom of a young friend of mine, but I would have posted the link anyway.  Excellent article.  Thanks, Val!  And thank your mom.

All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day are time set aside to broker peace between the living and the dead. Whether you are pagan or religious, Celt or Christian, New Age believer or doubter-at-large, these are the days when you traditionally acknowledge that the gone are not forgotten. The seasonal metaphors of reaping and rotting, harvest and darkness, leaf-fall and killing frost supply us with plentiful memento mori. Whatever is or isn’t there when we die, death both frightens and excites us.

Thus, throughout most of the Western world, graves are decorated on these first days of November with candles and fresh flowers. Picnics are held among the old stones and markers, relatives gather round family plots to give the dead their due of prayers and remembrances.

We humans are bound to and identified with the earth, the dirt, the humus out of which our histories and architectures rise …

Op-Ed Contributor – A Date With the Departed – NYTimes.com