Walk On Podcast Episode 64 : Communing with the Dead
Happy Halloween, Heathens!!!!
October, autumn in general, my birthday, Halloween season is my favorite time of year. I love pumpkins and corn mazes and crunchy leaves. There has always been a feeling of magic in my heart this time of year. Trick or treating, costumes, non-stop scary movies, Halloween haunts. My neighborhood growing up threw the best Halloweens—everyone celebrated and celebrated BIG.
Once I got older, started dabbling in the occult, and began opening up to the vibrations and sensations of Grandmother Earth and the esoteric beyond, I started to experience… more. A deeper connection to Samhain, to the veil thinning, to the dead.
My cousin Dustin died of a drug overdose when I was in my early twenties. A couple of years later I lost my familiar, a beautiful long-haired dachshund named Mercedes. One death was the kind of tragic shock which is only made worse by the fact that you could see it coming from a mile away but couldn’t do a goddamn thing to stop it. The second death, was a choice made by me, to end the suffering of someone I very much didn’t understand how to live without.
Both of these losses had an impact on me. I had loved ones die before, but, growing up my cousins and I were closer than close—more like siblings or comrades in arms or something. We stuck together. We all lived hard lives which fostered a very special kind of joy whenever we got together—an unspoken understanding of the hardship, a knowing, and the just-being-kids-ness we got to experience during those playdates, sleepovers, vacations. At one particular sleepover, Dustin and I stayed up later than everyone else, playing with the karaoke extra on the menu of the Wedding Singer DVD. We sang all the songs, loud, obnoxious, disrespectful of the sleeping bodies around us. The one that sticks in my mind the most is Hold Me Now, by the Thompson Twins, because, aside from it’s appearance in the movie, I had never heard it before… and neither had he. But somehow we knew every note. We knew exactly how to sing it, and boy did we sing—with all the schmoozy lounge-singer pathos of the original vocals. It has always been one of my favorite memories. As adults, our collective trauma started showing up in heartbreaking ways. Addiction, avoidance, self-harm, bad relationships. But still, when we got together, there was this palpable feeling of love.
I remember the day we got the call that he died, the tears came immediately heavy. The sobs were full-body ones. I felt a hole, a space, a break in the chain of what had been a lifelong bond between all of us. An absence. At the funeral, I looked at him, grown, peaceful, handsome in his suit (I’d never seen him in a suit as a grown-up), and I felt heartbroken all over again. Confused and betrayed, in a way. He wasn’t there. It was his body, but his soul, his spirit, his essence, his wheezy laugh, his hot temper, his easy tears, they weren’t there. I wanted to say goodbye to him but he seemed to be already gone.
Then a thought came, like a lightbulb. “Energy can neither be created or destroyed.” He had to be somewhere. This notion aided me in wading through the grief, which came in waves, will always come in waves.
One day, I was really missing him. I was feeling really angry at my family for the harm they caused, for the avoidance, for their refusal to deal with anything—always sweeping more dirt under the proverbial rug; for making every problem into either a joke or petty gossip. “It’s our fault. We should have helped. It’s all our fault.” Over and over and over. I was walking around Michaels Art Supply store, touching the Halloween decorations when over the loudspeaker came
I have a picture, pinned to my wall…
And I could feel his presence with me and I closed my eyes and listened with all my heart and hummed along, right there in the aisle, letting the tears fall.
Then, on his birthday every year, at least once, but sometimes all day long
An image of you and of me and
We're laughing and loving it all
On the anniversary of his death, as well,
But look at our life now
All tattered and torn
We fuss and we fight and
Delighting with tears
As we cry until dawn
Oh, whoa
And then it started to happen all the time, really. Any time I missed him or thought of him, or healed something big from my childhood, on the way home from therapy, in moments of bliss, seemingly randomly, but also so definitely not
Hold me now, whoa
Warm my heart
Stay with me
Let loving start
(Let loving start)
Once I started accepting that that was him, once I opened up to the possibility of his energy, he started visiting me in dreams. We’d hang out like it was no big deal. He’d give me advice or encouragement, an ancestor now. I’d wake up still feeling his energy. I didn’t need to miss him so much, because he wasn’t really gone.
My dog Mercedes took her last breath with her nose pressed to mine, her eyes closed after looking into mine one last time. She loved her chosen people so fiercely that she hated everyone else. Whenever I left, she would wait for me—refusing food or play or entertainment, waiting by the door. Watching her golden big-eared head bounce just above the screen when I was walking up the sidewalk was some of the greatest joy I’ve ever known. We have Big love. Huge. The night she died, just as I was falling asleep, she came to me. I sat in the black liminal space behind my eyes and she came and laid across my lap like always. I could feel her, smell her, as if she were really there. Except now her energy filled the entire space. I could feel her love for me as tangibly as I could feel mine for her. I cried and cried and cried “she’s so big now. She’s SO big now.”
Ever since then, she’s visited me in dreams and meditations. She’s always guarding me, guiding me, loving me—in my loneliest moments she comes to cuddle me. She’s an ancestor now, too.
When the veil between the worlds is thinnest, the lines of communication between the living and the dead become clear. Why should we fear such a natural occurrence? What if our ancestors are there to guide us to our highest good? Listen here.
