For Samhain. The first paragraphs of KINDRED RITES

[alfreda89]

The dead are always with us.

Most folks don’t fully understand that. People wrap a corpse in ritual and custom, say their good-byes, and try to move on. But it doesn’t work. We carry our dead, always. Long years later, something will bring the past to mind—a child’s motion, a woman’s perfume, a man’s sputtering laugh. For a brief moment, the past is now, and our dead live again.

As long as we remember them, we are shadowed by our dead.

---KINDRED RITES by Katharine Eliska Kimbriel

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The year turns; the dead may return.

Welcome their visit, their love, their wisdom should they give you enlightenment.

May you find good health, great creativity, and renewal in the year to come.
 

Comments

The departed

[iolosdream]

Yeah, I've thinking of my lost ones today. Hoping my sweetie is on Enterprise, several parsecs out as they escort shipload of sport horses to a new home in the stars. DRW

Re: The departed

[alfreda89]

<3 As we Elders say. . . .

[pameladean]

The very same lovely wishes to you.

The dead don't seem extra present to me at this time of year, more when I run across something of theirs, or on an anniversary of some kind. But I always go read Mike Ford's Liavek poem about the Liavekan equivalent of Hallowe'en.

P.

[alfreda89]

That's a nice tradition. My library is still in storage with my life. Maybe next year I can visit Mike's story again.

Did find a copy of A NIGHT IN THE LONESOME OCTOBER, so that tradition continues.