Coming Full Circle

Failte, Reader. Welcome back if you're a regular.

Blessings as the September Equinox rests over us. Whatever harvest you have been reaping in recent weeks, may it feed your mind, body, heart, and spirit fully as we enter the darkness. Wherever you find yourself as the light balances in the sky today, may your being feel at peace, unburdened of that which has troubled you in the year gone by, cleansed, awakening and opening to the rejuvenation of the season ahead. 

I usually post on a Friday at some stage, but this week, I made a different decision after a deeply healing experience borne of sorrowful circumstances. I will share it with you briefly before Part 4 of the story starts. Should you wish to continue directly into the story, make sure you've read Parts 1 through 3, lest you become confused while reading today. 

In Loving Memory

Last week, an old friend of mine very sadly lost her mother. We had not seen each other for many years. I will always remember her Mum dancing us around the kitchen at Christmas. At the funeral was another old friend with whom I had a falling out almost 10 years ago. I never thought we would speak again. I missed her often. 

Funerals in Ireland are an interconnected celebration of life and mourning of death. Like fear and excitement, pain and pleasure, joy and sorrow; life and death exist in parallel. While waiting outside the church, my former friend and I exchanged a gentle nod and quick hello. The first chip in the ice. The hurt child inside flared up. I felt anger and decided I didn't have to share her energy. I walked away from the group, sitting with a different old friend during the funeral. 

I'm not a good one for mass. Laughter has a way over taking me over when I start listening to some of the things the priest says. It's hard work to stay sombre sometimes. I even got kicked out of my confirmation practice because I went into a fit of convulsions. No disrespect meant. I used to serve mass, sang in the choir, all that good girl stuff. Each to their own beliefs and everyone is different. Anyway, I digress. 

During the funeral, I got to thinking about my friend's loss, a gift of forgiveness I received many years ago, the length of time it had been since my other friend and I's fallout, her mental health then, mine too, and I asked myself if I really wanted to hold onto all that hurt and anger. No was the answer. No. Who would I be hurting only myself. I may not have another chance to stand beside either of them again until, maybe even the next funeral. (Irish funerals, sad though they are, are also one of the most common incidences of reunion). 

Outside the church afterwards, we all stood together. Soon, the funeral procession went outside town to the burial grounds. The same burial grounds I stood in exactly three months ago, the first week I arrived back in Ireland, saying goodbye to my brother-in-law's Mum. The rest of us stood chatting. After funerals in Ireland, we go to a hotel or restaurant to eat, drink, reminisce and catch up. I had intended to go home. My old friend invited us back to where she was staying for a cuppa while waiting to go up to the restaurant. I decided to accept the invitation. Later that afternoon, I also accepted the suggestion of a beer garden and a pint.

"It's good to see you," she said.

"It's good to see you too. Really good." 

That evening, we all sat in our other friend's home house, where her mother used to dance us around the kitchen at Christmas, catching up, chatting, and laughing. It was the first time we had all been together in years. Out of very sad circumstances, we received great gifts: Friendship. Connection. Togetherness. Understanding. Acceptance. Love. 

What a Summer!

This week marks the third year since I made the biggest, bravest change I have ever made in my life, walking away from a highly toxic relationship back towards myself. A few weeks ago, I finished writing that story, my first book. My Mum and I have healed the final relationship cracks we've been filling with gold all summer. Last Monday, under the light of an almost full harvest moon, in the week of Autumn Equinox, I hugged two of the women with whom part of my heart will always be.

On Friday night, I left Mum in the sitting room, laughing her arse off at Gogglebox Ireland. I needed to get my blog post written. What I really wanted to do was sit on the couch and laugh. As I sat down to the desk, I tore the page of my calendar for that day. 

I thought of my friend's sad loss. I thought of other friends who've lost their parents. I reminded myself of how blessed I am to have mine. I closed my laptop and went downstairs to sit and laugh with my mother.

It Was Great to See You

Look out for the blessings in your life. Make memories in those moments. Allow them to settle upon your heart so that you may carry them with you wherever you go. 

As summer in Ireland draws for me to a close, and I prepare to return to Spain, and podcasting (Wahoo. Tune in on Tuesday), I find myself so incredibly grateful for the blessings in my life (even the ones that were curses at the time). This week, under the light of an almost full harvest moon, in the week of Autumn Equinox, I hugged two of the women with whom part of my heart will always be.

"It was great to see you."

"It was great to see you too. Really great." 

*******

The Osprey's Return - Part 4

Full as a tick after golloping the guts of the meat and veg she'd bought, Olivia sat relaxing under an early evening sun, sipping her second helping of Bailey's coffee. Golden fields stretched for miles just beyond her garden. Her gaze moved meditatively up the vegetable patches, over the badminton net, swooping across to her old Wendy House (her parents had never dismantled it, quietly hoping that someday a grandchild would play there), and up towards the plum tree she'd planted when they'd first moved in. Completing a full sweep of the land she had inherited, Olivia's eyes wove up, down and over the thorn bushes, sticky backs, and trees, all the way to the now giant sycamore in the corner above the shed and compost heap. 

"How I adored sitting up in that tree, far away from everyone but the birds, the wind, and the leaves. Do you remember how we used to play, Wind?" 

The trees around her rustled. Olivia jumped. She hadn't talked to the wind for many years.

"You weren't listening to me for a long time either," Wind whispered. "It's been nice to see you start paying attention again this year." 

Olivia, bottom jaw frozen open in a sort of stupefied shock, eyebrows raised in surprise, sat staring fixedly at the sycamore. She thought back to the shiver she'd got when considering the move back home. After a long pause, she inhaled and whispered back. 

"Do you remember? I'd sit up amongst the branches, as high as I could get, then throw the helicopters out when I'd feel your gust coming. You'd catch them and twirl them so they'd spin really fast towards the ground. Like real helicopter propellers."

"Then what would happen?" 

"I'd get really excited, and start bouncing my bum up and down on the branch, waving my hands all over the place." 

"Then?"

Olivia paused. "I can't remember." 

"Would you like me to show you?" 

Olivia felt frustrated and fearful. She wanted to know why her memory was blocked, but she was also talking to the wind. How could she be talking to the wind? When she was a child, it was normal. Children make up all sorts of things as they explore the world. An adult talking to the wind though, that was enough to make people look at you sideways. Still, Olivia had always been curious. She was entering a new phase of her life. Her courage and conviction were coming back. With them came her incessant thirst to understand ... herself and the world around her. 

"Yes, I would like you to show me." 

Whoooosh

The wind, euphoric, released a lasso like gust, curling the air around the sycamore's leaves, whipping off hundreds of brownish-green helicopter seed pods, and twisting them in the air. Olivia sat transfixed. Her focus began to blur as her eyes darted in rhythm with the giant funnel shape the pods were now forming. She sat back in her chair, unaware her body was moving, gazing open mouthed at the image beginning to form before her.

******

"Get down from that tree, child. You're up far too high, for Goddess sake." 

Joe spotted Olivia way up in the sycamore tree in the cornfield across the road from the graveyard. 

"Hi, Joe. Don't worry. I climb up here all the time. I feel like I'm on top of the world."

"You'll be on the bottom of it if you don't find yourself down in front of me. I wouldn't get over the guilt in my grave if anything happened to you." 

"OK, Joe. I'm coming."

"Slowly now, mind. I'll rest at the trunk here. Don't drop on me now. Heavens, I've had enough surprises today to last me whatever time I have left." 

Joe plucked a stem of corn from the field to chew on before bending slowly down to rest on what looked for all the world like a cottage threshold stone beneath the sycamore. He hadn't noticed it before. Olivia soon plopped down beside him, laying her head on his upper arm. 

"Tell me another story, Joe." 

Joe let out a long, mournful sigh. He had a story for her, all right; a story she was as yet too tender to hear. He'd protested to the healer 'til he was blue in the face and gasping for breath. 

"There are burdens we must all bear in this world, Joe. There are blessings equal to the burdens. When the time comes, 'twill be sooner than you think, the prophecy must be passed on. It is your duty as the Keeper. You will do it?" 

"Aye, Healer, on my honour, I will do it. Though know that it will be with a heavy heart which may never again thereafter lighten." 

"You are a good man, Joe O'Dowd." 

Joe sat silently beside Olivia for some time. His breathing began to slow as he readied to tell her the story. He had no notion how to tell it in a way that wouldn't rock her very world from under her. They only way was to start talking, and trust that the words would come. 

"Are you warm and comfortable, child? This will be a long one."

"Beside you Joe, I'm always warm and comfortable. Tell me the story." 

To be continued...