October light falls warm and golden, spilling over these autumn days with abandon, caring neither for the passage of time nor for the scurry or limp of creatures traveling its path. Behind the light, like an actor waiting in half-lit darkness for the curtain to rise, lies winter's face, impassive and chill. Into this new realm of time and light we step wistfully, transformed by renewed knowledge of our own mortality, gained and lost every year.
Breathing the sharp smell of sulfur from a match I light a candle. Now I am swinging on the hinge of this year's movement from past into future, remembering, remembering. The twin feasts of All Saints and All Souls rise gently before me while at my back lies the soft pale sweep of lives which have breathed their last. This is a time of the year for reflection, for sitting too long on the back step with a cup of tea while the air turns cold and supper is waiting to be made. It is now, while time is pushing heavily like the notes of the clock in the hall, that the essence of those I've loved drift in a low fog past my heart reminding me of their lives once as sharp and pungent as the smell of fresh orange peel.
How can they be gone? In some important way they have never left. It is so easily remembered - the way he always bit his lip when he was frustrated, the small freckle on the back of her hand, the smell of my grandmother's coat in the winter, the rising gasp of my friend in the last days of her illness. It all comes back, the bodies and spirits of those I've loved who loved me back. I feel the pitch and lurch of grief hard again. Then comes the great communion of saints to take me by the hand and lead me on.
The days grow short and cold. Halloween is upon us and after that, the predictable march of holidays punctuated by the usual commercial trumpeting. I want to mark this season quietly, remembering loved ones and saints with a table at home for their pictures, some candles and flowers. It's easy enough to do, the doing of it a balm always bringing tears. The tears are blessings, sweet rain on the hard soil of what's been forgotten, on grief flowering in winter. The church in her ancient wisdom gives us this gift once a year, encouraging communion with the host of saints, those from the distant past and those we knew ourselves, who are even now leading us on into the far reaches of our own lives.
Some years are harder than others. This is a hard one for all of us. We miss the comforts of community and the traditions of the season and feel more keenly than ever the losses that we’ve suffered. But if we’ve learned one thing over the past year it’s how deeply we need and love each other and it is this love, ignited by Christ and binding us together, that will get us through the shadows into the light that is surely coming.
Blessings,
Anne+
