Samhain Through the Faces of Old Women

Last updated on: October 30, 2015 at 5:00 am by Maggie Beaumont

Samhain Through the Faces of Old Women 2015-10-30T05:00:06+00:00 Maggie Beaumont

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Artwork by Maggie Beaumont.

The Witch looks out the window at the waning moon shining through the clouds as it highlights the castle beyond the bridge.

She listens a long moment to the rush of wheels on the great highway. Something is coming this way.

Still listening, she turns from the window and asks, “What do you see?”

I turn my head and look, not for the first time, at the dark mirror that hangs below the face of Cerridwen on the wall over my left shoulder. At first, I see nothing; then my own face swims into focus; then I see the face of my mother.

I turn back to the Witch. “I see the passage of time,” I say, “in the faces of old women.”

Artwork by Maggie Beaumont

A few days from now we will celebrate Samhain night. Some years our ritual has been a mock-battle of the Oak King and the Holly King, though different groups enact that battle at other seasons. Some years we host Dumb Supper, feasting with our Ancestors on the foods they loved best in life. This year we will send Messages to the Dead, taking this moment to make a start on clearing the unfinished business we still have with those who have left this life.

In the faces of old women, these days, I see a lot of unfinished business. And in a few such faces, I see the bliss of knowing everything that needs doing has been done. As I go about my days, I am blessed to see families engaged in the important, loving work of saying everything that needs to be said; of holding one another in times of great emotion; of allowing each person to manage change and challenge in their own way.

In the hospital where I work, we hold a memorial service this week for our patients who have died in the year just ending, celebrating the love their families bore them, and honoring the care and effort with which we treated them. We will grieve again those moments when we did all we could to save a life that was flowing away as fast as we worked. We will honor again those elders who wanted just another year or decade that we couldn’t quite give them, those babies whose lives ended before they had quite begun.

The Witch turns to me. “What does this Samhain mean to you, this year, this month, this moment?”

Samhain is traditionally a time for letting go of what must die – the grain, the flowers, what livestock we cannot feed over the winter. This year I’m also letting go of relationships that will never come again. Friends die, move away, get interested in other things. I grow and change. A long-beloved begins a journey this week of many months and thousands of miles. We both recognize that we may never see each other again in this life. It is good to give honor to what must be lost before we let it go.

The Witch is watching the moon shining on the castle. I am watching the shadows below the castle walls. Joy and sadness, loss and knowledge, at the turning of the year.

Blessed Be.

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