Facing the Darkness

I have received a text from Carol just as I left the Highgate station, crossing the street to our flat. She just wanted to know someone would be home real soon, as she’s felt the souls of our departed loved ones flocking around her & demanding to be acknowledged. Which understandably freaked her out a tiny bit.

You see, even though today’s 31st October - when the veil between the world of the Living and the world of the Dead is whisper-thin yadayada, and my flatmate Carol’s inherent psychic channeling abilities are sparking like electricity, she’s still very much set on keeping that portal shut and sealed for now, and just blatantly ignoring there was any door to begin with.

All along I’ve been facing my own personal Darkness.

Tonight, on Halloween 2018, we’re hosting our first ‘Feast for the Dead’, which sounds suitably macabre, but really is just about spending a mindful moment cooking, sharing memories & enjoying meals, drinks & music appreciated by our family members or friends that are no longer hanging out on this plane of reality. And that way - for one night sharing our table with them again.

I’m hosting my late brother, serving his favourite steak and neat whiskey on the rocks (bleurgh, pray for me).

I don’t really know if I’m any good at processing grief over my brother’s suicide, or if I’ve even ever started properly. What I do know is, that if I allow myself to open that pandora’s box - nostalgia & memories are not the only things spilling out.

There’s a gnawing feeling of being hurt. Anger that amongst the hundreds of reasons to leave, he didn’t consider me as the one reason to stay. The bone-melting terror of knowing some things can never come to pass for us. That no matter what, the ship has sailed and I had no say in it. And following in tow is our good old shame that I make his big (the biggest) struggle and pain all about myself.

Walking home tonight hugging a giant pumpkin that would become a soup and a lantern in a few moments, I felt like being punched in a chest. A hollow icy-cold gaping space where my lungs should be, that can’t be filled with any amount of whiskey.

And as I so often do, I embark on a massive head-trip. I start looking around, trying hysterically to find someone Living I can blame this on. I get jealous, deluded and suspicious, resolved on spotting the betrayal in time and preventing being hurt by someone I love again. I am convinced this anxious knot of barbed wire in my chest is my intuition telling me I’m being either cheated on, or my parents are keeping some nasty diagnosis from me, my friends think I’m not as fun as I used to be and my mum just wish I would have a family of my own already, instead of playing witchcraft with thirty-something fellow-failures. None of which is true but it hurts anyway.

This is my personal Shadow. And yes, I know, it makes sense it would creep through the door for an unsolicited visit tonight.

So some steak & whiskey, duck & sparkling wine (for David’s grandma), red beans & rice with brandy (Carol’s brother) later, each of us shuffle a deck of tarot cards whilst sharing a memory of our loved ones - tuning into their energy and pulling a single card as a message from them. Something they want us to know, a sort of guidance perhaps.

I pulled Three of Cups. Three maidens depicted on the card are toasting with cups and celebrating. I looked around our table and choked up. My partner David from France and Carol from Louisianna, my little Czech self and our home away from home we created together in London. Home that we built from scratch, furnishing it with memories & rituals, habits and all the personal triumphs and disasters we celebrated and commiserated together. Three of Cups is a card of happy reunion with a loved one, relative or a long lost friend. Celebrating and sharing a quality time with those you hold close.

Could this be the message from my brother - to work through my grief, so that I can start appreciating the rare gift of true connections I unpacked with these two weirdos, my chosen family?

As it's often the case with tarot and life in general, time will uncover much deeper meaning behind the seemingly ordinary moments.

Completely against any expectations, this time next year, we will be hosting another and last of our 'Feast for the Dead'. Summer 2019, me and David will make an ultimate against-the-reason decision to abandon our safe and sane lives in London for an unsafe and insane vision of 'life on the road'.

It will take us all around the world (working on board a luxury cruise ship), before spitting us back in Europe in spring 2020, with covid pandemic in full swing and all of our lives globally becoming unrooted, all the plans overthrown and our collective future challenged. Three of Cups. Honour and savor these connections, this moment at the table with your chosen family, this chapter in your personal history, because if there's one thing that I know for sure, it's that change is inevitable.

It took me until about noon the following morning to start feeling like I could eat again. I wish the personal Darkness could be processed and expelled as easy as that. I never have trust issues. Until I do. And boy is it a shitshow. And no, they won't just disappear overnight or with any amount of logical reasoning.

But perhaps looking it right in the face & continue living anyway is part of the whole Samhain package. By challenging our personal shadows, we take a leap forward and away from the familial conditioning, reactivity and models of behaviour designed by our ego to protect us from harm, but also keep us always at arms length from people we really should be embracing and holding as close as we can.

Because you know that however long and frequent - in 2020 the Zoom hangouts will not cut it and for now - that's all we've got.

Maybe part of honoring our ancestors is also recognising patterns passed through our bloodline we no longer want to participate on. Acknowledging our family and ancestral demons & burdens, but stepping up for ourselves, our children and our children’s children and letting them know:

‘This ends with me.’