Memento Mori

Let my words be heard.

All life is one, and everything that lives is holy.

All death is one, and everything that dies is holy.

“Memento Mori”.  An enigmatic reminder of our innate mortality as well as an urging to live our lives to the fullest—for our words and deeds will dictate how we are remembered.  

This has been a week of upheaval, of death, of remembrance.  Whether your mind immediately jumps to the anniversary of the fall of the Twin Towers and the thousands of lives lost to rubble and chaos, the multiple active shooters across the country who have claimed our youth, the ongoing Palestinian genocide, the barn cat struck on a rural road, or the murder of a political sycophant—invariably your thoughts have landed on the somber inevitability of death this week.

One of the more poignant (and underrated) screen portrayals of the aching and ineffable nature of death is from the TV cult-classic Buffy the Vampire series.  Anya laments: “I don't understand how this all happens. How we go through this. I mean, I knew her, and then she's- There's just a body, and I don't understand why she just can't get back in it and not be dead anymore. It's stupid. It's mortal and stupid. And-and Xander's crying and not talking, and-and I was having fruit punch, and I thought, well, Joyce will never have any more fruit punch ever, and she'll never have eggs, or yawn or brush her hair, not ever, and no one will explain to me why.“

It is too much to process, let alone attempt to comprehend…Death.  In all my years of work ushering souls over the threshold between the living and the dying, all my years of work channeling the departed, conveying messages to the hearts of the surviving, aching for some semblance of solace, I still don’t understand Death.  None of us do.  When the media waterboards us—with inundations of information and uncensored imagery we become numb, we dissociate, we become cruel, we become incised, we become broken, we become less of ourselves. We become less human.  That’s exactly what The Machine wants.

This isn’t about politics.  Though witchcraft is inherently political.  So, I suppose it is… but that isn’t my intent.  I didn’t sit down to share my ruminations with the intention of being divisive, or to point fingers, or to pour fuel on the raging inferno that is immolating more than the nation I call home.  This is about humanity, and magic, and compassion. This is about creating distinctions around words like “grieving” and “mourning”.  Clarifying what “compassion”, “empathy”, and “solemnity” are and somehow, what can be inferred by the once innocuous word: “celebration”.

All life is one and everything that lives is holy.

Not all living beings speak or act with holiness.  Those beings will not, nor should they be remembered as holy.  To alter the memento mori of someone is to unearth one’s rootedness to reality; intentionally adding another filtered layer of obscuration between yourself and all that is divine, godly, holy.  It is, in my view, sacrilege.  To view the life of an individual honestly is a great act of courage—to yourself and to the deceased.  To acknowledge someone’s shortcomings, struggles, failures, is to acknowledge their humanity.  Just as acknowledging their successes, triumphs, and generosities is to acknowledge their humanity.  We are complex, faceted, messy beings—that is the beauty of our existence.  Our perfection is firmly nestled within our peccadillos and infractions.  It is through this observation and acknowledgement (without need to pass judgment) that we cultivate grace for others, and grace for ourselves.  Eventually grace gives way to compassion and we see the beauty in the marrings—we are blinded by the holiness residing in the lowly and the self-righteous.

  experience grief at every turn—the fleeting nature of impermanence moves me to my core; it softens me as it molds me into a gentler version of myself.  Grief is an internal experience—one that sometimes mounds so much pressure it begs for relief, found through movement, lamentations, and other acts of mourning.  Sometimes grief is quiet, introspective, and doesn’t yen for volatile expression.  It simply settles into itself and eventually dissipates with a heavy sigh.  When we lose the urgings of grief, we lose a bit of our humanity.  A bit of our wildness.  A bit of our interconnectedness—and it must be regained.  There is no excuse for allowing your humanity to dwindle or wither.  This one precious life is meant to be carefully nourished—and fiercely protected.

When The Machine (media, politics, capitalism, etc., ad nauseum) compels you to lose a piece of yourself to rage (bait)—I challenge you to rage against it. To rage against it as though it were the inevitable dying of the light.  One day, it will be, and what will remain of your memory?  (I would like to be remembered as kind.  Patient.  Compassionate—whether someone was “deserving of it” or not.  Tenacious.  Wild.  Unbroken.  Grace-full.  Messy.  But always, always trying.)

I will grieve those lost on 9/11.  I will grieve the children who “will never have any more fruit punch, ever”.  I will grieve the Palestinians with no relief from suffering or its causes.  I will grieve the barn cat.  And I will grieve Charlie Kirk, not in spite of his myriad shortcomings and misgivings, but because of them.  Because they made him a messy human.  I will not celebrate any death, nor does that imply I’ll celebrate every life lived.  I will mourn when the grief is too much and needs an outlet, and when the grief is soft enough, I will exhale, and release it to the dying light.  

With grief many times there is rage guarding a deep fear. That fear is deserving of solemnity and gravitas.  It constricts our seat of power until we feel as though we’re balanced precariously on a knife’s edge—movement inextricably painful, longing for relief.  This is where compassion (often misnamed as empathy) can offer solace from suffering.  Compassion isn’t swimming “in it” with someone, compassion is being both the ship and the lighthouse. A refuge from the emotional storm—that doesn’t take on water, and a steadfast beacon, guiding the navigation of grief, anger, and fear.  Because compassion doesn’t “take it on”, compassion needn’t discriminate against who is or isn’t deserving, the way empathy begs to do when it’s about to be waist-deep in someone else’s mess and isn’t sure if it can manage.  We can only process so much—and we already have so much of our own grief and fear and instability to manage… but we can always shine our light for others in the storm.