We are in a season of grief. Ofrendas are everywhere, in galleries and at protests. KEXP is playing music about it. There’s a play titled “Eulogy: Or How to Plan Your Own Funeral” showing on Capitol Hill.
Some of this comes from wider diffusion of traditional ritual: from All Hallows’ to All Souls’, via Dia de los Muertos, the culture is learning to look past the ghoulish masks of Halloween to the thinning of the veil that they celebrate. So many of us this year are choosing to walk through that, into the vale of tears and out into garden of remembrance.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Everyone who grew up in the Cold War will tell you that existential questions often follow spikes in existential dread. There’s nothing like a threat to humanity that makes us stop and wonder what it means to be human. Whether through AI angst or climate catastrophe or neofascist nuclearism, many of us are going through this season across the nation and the globe.
Of course, this year, I’m going through it in a particular way. Today marks the first anniversary of my father’s passing into glory.
The seasonality of my father’s death only dawned on me a few weeks ago; this is what the liminal time between Halloween and Advent will mean for me from now on. I didn’t know what to do with this realization, at first, but soon, I began to see with ‘the eyes of my heart enlightened.’ I noticed the seasonality of marigolds for the first time, which led a friend to suggest that I prepare an altar for Day of the Dead for the first time as well. I didn’t grow up with this tradition, so learning that these flowers that I was seeing were intimately tied to this ritual I was invited to adopt (or that was adopting me) was nothing short of a revelation. And now this time feels less liminal than before.
This is why we mark the seasons. We fill the emptiness of clock time with the plenitude of intention and meaning so that we can train ourselves to see “soul-first.”
The marigolds were always there; the departed are always near – and we often need ritual to remember to see and hear and feel then.
It’s kinda like that skater bro @g1mpy who’s been going viral lately. He cracks me up, and, I think, in any other season of my life, might have slightly annoyed me, but his intentional seeking of “what totally rips” is more than a silly gimmick, dude. It’s part of that ritual training of the eye and the ear and the soul. I struggle to be “eternally stoked,” but I recognize the wisdom in looking towards eternity through the keyhole of the little things of life.
I spent weeks and weeks writing about my dad last year. I took photos non-stop. I think it’s called a “grief burst,” or maybe I’m confusing terms. Like how “grief” and “mourning” aren’t interchangeable, as I’ve also learned. I learned a lot in the past year in the various sessions and fora I attended on the subject.
But I’m still learning about myself. My sonhood to his fatherhood. Our links in the chain of time. I had expected this first year (and there can only be one first year) to hit me like a ton of bricks, but the kindness of a friend and of ritual turned that around. Plus, the fact that the whole world seems to be harmonizing around this same tone or theme or motif has helped as well. But the questions remain. And that’s going to be the work of a lifetime.
May you continue to rest in peace, dad. I know we still have a lot of talking to do.