On Samhain eve, I dreamed I was in circle at Tejas Witchcamp. I was just home from camp, and missing it deeply – I hadn’t realized being on the teaching team would make re-entry more challenging for me.
In the dream, it was night and dark, and we were beginning the devocations at the end of a ritual. We were seated on the ground, around a fire in the center, 60 people or so. Someone in the center devoked / bid goodbye to the ancestors, and then the ritual stopped. There was this deep silence. The person in the center looked gently and meaningfully at me. And I realized I was there because I’d been invited in at the beginning of the ritual, and now I was being told “goodbye.” I was an ancestor – it was time for me to get up and leave the circle of the living again.
In the dream, I felt much as I did when I woke up. A little silly, a little grateful, a little sad to be leaving, a little excited to see where I went next.
It puts you out of step to be OK with your own death, and recognize every day that you’re drawing closer to it. Yes, everyone is drawing closer to death every day. But I recently had an experience in which an exercise put me and five others in free fall. “What do you do?” the facilitator kept asking as we fell, “You’re still falling. What do you do?” At some point I said, “I get ready to die.” Two others there said, “Yes,” but three said “No!” Then someone pointed out that the three of us who said “Yes” were in our fifties and sixties, and the three who said “No!” were younger. Those who said “Yes” had been making their peace with death, walking with it much more closely for a while. It makes a difference.
So I woke up from the dream and began to consider sustainable death. Sustainable, in that the last thing I’m a part of on this earth, I don’t want to be about poisoning my body and, eventually, the earth. And I need to plan around that now. I’ll be asking Yana and PonyMoon to agree to manage what I can’t plan for. I’ll make some arrangements and get them a plan, and ask them to take it from there.
I was blessed to participate in the green burial of Fern Mary, an elder in the Central Texas women’s community who died some years ago. It was quite an eye opener, the things we’ve forgotten about how to honor and bury the dead. The site was so lonely and peaceful and beautiful – I remember the hole was dug at least 9 feet deep. So deep … everyone attending was earth-based, and there was laughter and wailing, all going on at the same time, everyone safe to express their grief as it was. The woman whose land it was and who oversaw the burial said it was the healthiest funeral she’d ever seen, and I believe it.
A sustainable death, that sustains life. Kind of amused that I have some research to do (the search engine is my friend …). Thinking about what songs I’d like sung. Feeling the distance widening, between those who aren’t at a place to say “Yes” to my dying, while I am nearing that place of “Yes” a little more each day. Do I still have a lot to do, a lot I want to do? Yes, very much so. Since camp, I have a whole new relationship with the spirits of the land to explore.
I’ll get as far as I get with that in this living body, and then I’ll explore that relationship from the other side. And I can’t help hoping that from that place, I hear those I love call me into circle, as an ancestor or spirit, and that I’m able to join you again, for just a little while. Watch for me. I’ll be listening for you.