Today, your son showed me some of your trinkets.
They were all carefully packed away in your chifforobe, loosely organized but done so with love. He told me about how he made the buckskin medicine bag and filled it with herbs and calcite dust. He collected seashells and fossils and rocks for you.
He showed me your tarot decks: one perfectly preserved and wrapped in a scarf, a well-worn paper booklet placed upon it that still wore your fingerprints. The other, a practical Rider Waite. I was so happy, actually, relieved, when he said you preferred the Waite deck over the fancier one. I think it has better vibes, too. I pulled the most perfect card from it today. We left it shuffled as you had it, however many ages ago it was that you’d used it last.
I wonder if you were a Star Seed. I wonder if your spirit really was too much for your body. I wonder if you truly were so magnificently special that you just couldn’t make it here in this reality, and your co-existence with a physical body was doomed, no matter what. I wonder if you infused your light into your son. I wonder if he has the same gifts. (We’ve talked about this at length during our quarantine conversations.)
I hope you have forgiven me for all the things I did not do. I assumed you had and then promptly put it out of my mind, perhaps selfishly. I hope all that I have done since has made you happy. I hope that continuing on in your tradition honors you.
And I hope you don’t mind if I use your deck! I read that it is bad luck to buy your own first deck, that it must instead be given or gifted or found. Your son offered it to me in your absence.
I am sorry that the last thing you ate was Chef Boyardee ravioli. I remembered that recently and it’s been bothering me. It just doesn’t seem right. I know, it’s dumb. I know you don’t actually care. 🙂
I’m sorry for not saying anything to you out loud while you were dying, besides thanking you for raising such a wonderful son. It was forced because I was sad and scared and all those people were there and I hated it. But I read from The Prophet to you the night before, and that holds more meaning to me than all the rest of it combined.
I hope you have forgiven me for sometimes misplacing my bitterness toward the disease and putting it on you. I know you know how left out I felt, how third-wheely it could be sometimes. It was really hard for both of us in completely different ways. I did not want to compete for your son’s time. So, I chose not to. You always came first and I understood, I never challenged that. I know sometimes you did, and I have forgiven you, too. I hope it’s okay to say it.
I told your son today today – or maybe yesterday – that I did not have any impressions of you ever being here or visiting. The first and last time that happened was right after you died, soon after we got rid of the hospital bed in the living room. (I wanted it gone – I think you would have approved of its immediate removal.) I also told him that I believe we can call out to loved ones and they can hear us and respond. They can visit and answer our call. I know he has called out to you in the past, but he didn’t know he could do it and have any effect. He knows now.
Just sayin’.
You would be so proud of him.
Margot Velvet 