So... All Hallows is November 1st right? Or what we otherwise call All Saints Day or Day of the Dead? Right?
I'm not religious, and if I was religious at one time, I was raised in the Baptist church so we didn't do such things. My parents were agnostic at best, at worst closet atheists too afraid not to believe. They took us kids to Sunday school but did not attend themselves. But I digress. Simply put, Halloween to me, is just a candy dress up day. I am not religious at all. I do understand the origins of the day because I'm more of a history geek than anything else. So hence the ask... All Hallows is November 1st? and All Hallows Eve is the night before that, like Christmas Eve, and tomorrow is the eve of the eve so today is the eve of the eve of the eve?
Do I have this straight?
:-D
Just messing with ya.
Yesterday was a bad day. Yesterday was the 8 year anniversary of my mother's death. It hit me kinda hard so I avoided social media after posting and deleting something on Facebook. Speaking of All Hallows Eve. I buried my mother in front of her grandmother's house on November 1st. The funeral director wanted to do it on the 31st. I could not tell that little old man that I was not burying that woman in the ground in front of a house of a woman I am convinced was a witch on Halloween. So I simply told the other truth, I'm almost four hours away and I have a small child and Tuesday is the best day for me to get there. And he agreed and there we were, in front of my great-grandmother's tiny house wiped clean of the yard of flowers and the picket fence and her chickens and the date palms that stunk so badly I can still smell them, with one of her brothers just me and the funeral director and his crew and backhoe while fucking Christmas music played from my uncle's truck radio... and it was so hot and dry just like now and I couldn't watch them lower her into the vault and I never hated my brother and sister more than I did right then but I was so very wrong about how much I could hate them. Horrible people that she raised to be just like her. And I put her in the ground behind the only decent person in her family and I hope she finally found some peace. But damn... the shit that sticks with you. At least the date trees were gone and the rotting stench of over rip fruit in the Florida sun wasn't part of that day.
Strangely, one of my first vivid memories also took place in that exact place. I was 3. At my great-grandfather's funeral. The first of them to go into that ground right out front. The house was still small. I loved that house. It was a white salt box style with an added on front porch painted green. The screen door squeaked. I remember it was warm enough to wear a short dress and no sweater. I had on black buckle shoes. I can't remember if it was spring or fall. It wasn't summer. I remember my mother and I sat under the blue tent and she cried while my daddy and her brothers and a couple of men I didn't know carried the casket from the house and the screen door had to be taken off, and my aunt, with her long red hair and short brown skirt ,crying inconsolably, being supported by my great-grandmother when it should have been the other way. And wondering why we were the only family sitting. My mother was pregnant with my brother but I didn't know that, and I was 3 but I didn't think that applied to me. I remember the date trees and the green grass and the blue sky and all the flowers in my grandmother's garden yard and the concrete flamingoes that I loved. Her whole yard was flowers. No grass. Just the white sandy loam dirt that was common so close to the gulf and tall flowers and those flamingoes and the rooster crowing in the back. She had those prissy little chickens that looked like they wore fluffy pants. And when it was over and we went inside my daddy and my uncles put the furniture back and I rode on the couch while they lifted it and I remember my black buckle shoes and the smell of old fires and the handmade brooms by the door that no one wanted me to touch that day and the mirror over the fireplace had a black scarf draped over it. And that's the first memory of that house that I have and the last. No one of our family lives in the house now. My aunt rents it. Most of the family are in the front yard now. Except that damn aunt who cried inconsolably in the first memory that has tried to have the family exhumed and cast off their land so she can sell it... even the grandfather she mourned so loudly.
Memories are strange. Everything can and will come full circle. I have no memory at all of my great-grandmother's funeral, in that exact same location four years later. I was seven. You'd think I would. But I don't. At least not the kind of memory that has any visceral meaning to it. I can't remember if it was hot or cold. I can't remember the house or the garden. I can't remember anything. I remember going to the hospital with my mother when they took her in. I stayed in the car. That was the last time I ever saw her. I don't remember if the casket was in the house or what kind of shoes I wore. I was too big to get rides on floating couches. I had a brother. My mother was pregnant again, with a baby that would never be born. It was a boy. I often wonder if he'd lived if he'd be like my siblings.
I don't believe in such things as veils between this world and the next. But if I did, and the thoughts in my head, I'd say, I feel it thinning. Or maybe I'm finally ready to let go.
Either way, we are here, two days before Halloween. Whatever we believe or don't believe. However you celebrate the departed. With candy and costumes. Or ritual sacrifices. Have a good one.
Peace,
Mercy
Oh yeah, and if you're still here, you can buy my 9 shortest stories for 99 cents through the weekend. Only on Amazon.
