Back on the bench, oppossum ghosting by

Dearest Phoenix of the WEb,
Funny how just anything can take me.  Take me back.  Maybe it is more like the thing awakens the me who is still there, who has always been there for three and a half years now.  As the Autumn Equinox has passed, I find myself here, there, on that bench holding your broken body.  I am wailing, wailing....turning over all of life to this death. Today as I walked through the woods with Beetle, crying, being on that bench, holding you in my lap, your life force draining onto my work pants, I reassured myself that I see me there, I recognize I have been there for three and a half years and if it's necessary I will be there another of the same.  I didn't try and stop the tears, the deep grief, the remembering.  I simply sat down there beside me.  We wept together.  I am still weeping, whether or not others see it.

Being just past the turn of the Wheel towards The Deep, I have been reflecting on the Outward Time with Demeter.  How we have been together in new ways, how I woke up to Life and Living differently and decided to try and not be afraid of it.  She taught me the incredible joy of planting and tending my garden, creating and fostering beauty around my home, my sanctuary, Her temple.  And, here I am, just past the threshold of The Deep.  It's not an easy turn around from the Outer to the Inner time, even for someone like me.  I am feeling things differently this year, this turning.  As I step through this long hallway, threshold, I greet The Deep and what I left here at Spring when I said Yes to Demeter.  And, it's grief.  Still grief.  Still me on that bench.  I am the bereft Demeter holding the beloved vacant body of her Persephone who has gone into the Underside of the Wheel,  a shamanic Journey to the Grandmothers.  I am Demeter pledging my life, what remains of it, to this holding, this death, this separation. 

And, so, I walked today with Beetle, crying and sitting beside myself on that bench, and then I turn and say, "This story is not over, you know. This is the worst most excruciating part of it." We look up and an oppossum walks by, white and ghostlike.  We can hardly believe she is so close; surely she hears us, this wailing.  No, she keeps walking by, close by.  I say, "There will be more to this story.  There must be.  Persephone is not gone forever.  Demeter holds vigil, tends the broken, vacant body, wanders the land devastated,  refusing life.  One day, though, remember, one day when the timing comes, there is a Return.  We cannot possibly know when that will be.  Until then, I sit here with you. We will play dead in this life as long as necessary."

These last two weeks I've had an oppossum take up residence in my crawlspace.  Finally, we trapped her and have relocated her to a wildlife reserve.   I wonder if this creature has come to remind me, call me back to that bench and sit, hold, remind myself that the story of death is not over. 

It feels better to write this.  To you, beloved Phoenix.  To you.

My total love,
Me