For this Kansas City family, lost loved ones are never truly lost on Dia de los Muertos

For the Palacio family, Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, is a chance to reintroduce lost loved ones to a world that never got to meet them. Using one of the holiday’s most well known traditions, the building of the ofrenda, the family creates intimate glimpses into the lives of those who have passed on.
The sounds of Latin music and sizzling grills filled the air on the chilly first Friday in October, as hundreds of Kansas City residents gathered at the Mattie Rhodes Cultural Center in the city’s historic Westside neighborhood. Crowds of multi-generational families fought off the evening’s dropping temperature by exchanging intimate greetings and warm embraces.

It was Mattie Rhodes' 25th annual Dia de los Muertos Family Festival, the first of dozens of celebrations that would happen before and after the holiday, which is traditionally observed on November 1 and 2.

As the crowd wandered through the event, a handful of families stood beside a row of cars which lined 17th Street. In the opened trunks of each car sat intricately decorated shrines, covered in the traditional arrangements of orange marigolds and calaca skulls, known as ofrendas.