Vertamae Grosvenor searched for answers to her young grandson‘s questions of "why?" when his father died. Grosvenor took her grandson, Oscar, to Oaxaca, Mexico, where death, in its celebratory symbols and rituals, is 1)inescapable. He found 2)solace in performing caretaking rituals in a cemetery and building an altar to his father, and in seeing others grieving for their ancestors alongside him. Oscar found comfort in everyone being "even."

　　You can read the transcript:

　　ALEX CHADWICK, HOST: In the summer of last year, the son-in-law of NPR‘s Vertamae Grosvenor was killed in a 3)head-on car crash with a drunken driver. It happened before dawn on the day that Vertamae was to have put her then-8-year-old grandson on a flight to Chicago where his father would have been waiting.

　　She struggled with how to help the child bear the loss of his father. And she decided to turn to a culture different from her own.

　　VERTAMAE GROSVENOR, NPR REPORTER: My son-in-law Beau, as he was called, was a musician, a bass player. When his son and namesake Oscar asked why, why did this happen to my dad, I choked, remembering as a child how my elders were able to utter words of solace with ease and certainly, but I couldn‘t. I felt that meaningful answers to Oscar‘s "why?" required a faith deeper than I had at the time.

　　One night, weeks after Beau‘s memorial service, I woke from the deepest part of sleep with Oaxaca on my mind. Shortly after my mother passed in 1993, I went to Oaxaca, Mexico on assignment during the Days of the Dead celebration. Death was everywhere in Oaxaca. It was impossible to avoid a direct confrontation. And yet, I came away comforted.

　　So, hoping to make it better, I decided to take my grandson Oscar to Oaxaca.

　　Death was everywhere in Oaxaca. In the markets, vendors sell 4)crystallized sugar skulls with 5)sequined eyes, chocolate coffins, 6)clay 7)skeletons. Death designs cut out of flowing colored tissue paper dance around the city. 8)Murals and paintings display death with a thousand different faces. There are altars and offerings for the dead in restaurants, churches, homes and hotels.