I know I talk about time a lot in these posts but I really marvel at how much quicker it seems to be slipping away. I suppose it has something to do with age. The year isn't broken down anymore into school and non-school, spring break and Christmas break. We get up, we go to work, we come home and have supper, we go to bed. Do children think about time? Or is it so much easier to contemplate it now that we are adults in the real world, taking responsibility for our own choices, becoming aware of our own mortality?
Halloween is very important to me. It's my favorite holiday in my favorite month in my favorite time of the year. I've always loved it, but I love it even more now because it was the night that I met my husband. We are celebrating tonight with some seasonal comfort food - slow cooker black bean pumpkin chili. It smells delicious. I can't wait to eat it and watch The Nightmare Before Christmas in front of the fire. Our street is short and sparsely populated so we won't get any trick-or-treaters. It will be a cozy night at home for us.
Halloween as we now know it has only existed for slightly over a century, perhaps even less. The ancient Celts called this day Samhain, which means "summer's end." It was the last harvest festival of the year, when all of the crops had been harvested and stored for the coming winter, when livestock were brought in from far fields and either stored away or slaughtered for food. The ancient Celts were very aware of the changing of the seasons, in a way that we are not aware of now. The seasons and the holidays all seem to blend in together, blurring through the twelve months that we call a year. Our survival no longer depends on whether we planted enough food or whether we had a good crop. We can go down to the grocery store and get whatever we want. Perhaps it's a nice convenience. Perhaps it's a bad one. Perhaps we are paying for the convenience with our health and our lives and our sanity.
Samhain was also a time to honor the dead. This is represented today in Catholicism as All Saints' Day and in Mexico as Dia de Las Muertas, or Day of the Dead. It was believed by the Celts to be a time when the veil between the worlds was at its thinnest. An excellent movie that explores this theology and the history of Halloween is Halloween Tree, an animated film based on a story by Ray Bradbury. Tonight I have lit a candle in memory of the loved ones that have gone before us. Their time is done. They no longer worry about the changing seasons, car expenses, taxes, or what to buy for Christmas. They are only love, pure and beautiful, love that shines down on us as we go through our busy day. They are the gentle voices that whisper comfort in our dreams. They are our guiding lights, and we will miss them always, until the day when we too are done with time and can join them in the peaceful light of pure love.
I encourage you to light your own candle and take a moment, somewhere between the ringing doorbell or taking your own children around, to reflect and remember your own precious loved ones, the ones who have left the physical world behind but are forever in your heart.
Grandpa Rhedin. Uncle Jack. Aunt Betty. Great-Grandma Kay. Grandpa Epperson. Great-Grandpa Gallaher. Great-Grandma Gallaher. The father-in-law that I never knew, my husband's father Rodney. My husband's Uncle Russell. Uncle Todd. Great-great-grandparents that passed when I was a child; great-aunts and great-uncles. The names become more familiar as I grow older; the grief becomes closer, harder. The sounds of their voices may become forgotten and their faces may be only memories, but they are all there inside of me, shining with love in my heart, watching over me and the ones they left behind. I honor them always, but on Halloween especially. I miss them and I love them, and I thank them for the gifts and the love and the joy that they brought me.
No comments:
Post a Comment