Halloween is come. Yet I am thinking not so much of candy
and plastic or rubber masks. Rather, I am thinking of older times. Perhaps some
racial or genetic memory calls down the centuries flown. My pagan ancestors,
speaking in faint whispers, some ancient humming along the usually insensitive antennae
of my DNA. Suddenly the word Halloween
doesn’t fit on my tongue. Nor Hallowe’en. Not even All Hallows Eve. No, the
right word is…. Samhain. The coming of the dark half. It is not a celebration,
not a fall festival. It is a wake. It is the death of the old year, the end of
light and warmth, and the beginning of the long dead of winter. I imagine
hearing the words of the shaman, a druid priest, speaking beneath bushy brows
and fierce eyes, to beware. For this night, after darkness falls, as midnight
waxes, the wall which separates this world from that other becomes thin. So
that others may pass. Others….and the dead. Not only to pass, but to speak, and
to be heard. If you dare.
Feeling that call, I make my way. As the shadows of
encroaching night gather beneath old oaks, their bare branches questing for the
darkening sky even as their roots grasp the cold ground, I find myself
standing. Standing before tomb stones. My familial plot. Why here? I ask
myself. Do I really think to hear some dear voice, long silent, speak as dry
leaves skitter over my feet? It all begins to seem so, irrational. Even so, I
seem to be possessed with a sense of abandon. My decision made, I set upon the
old marble border which marks the extent of the ground where relatives lay,
unseeing and unknowing.
Presently I see a figure marching along an approaching path.
It has become quite dim now, so he moves as a shadow within shadows. Yet, I can
see it is a man with grey hair, wearing a hat.
“They’re coming to get you Barbara” I whisper, chuckling.
Still he comes, marching to some unheard cadence. Soon he is
close enough I can see it is a military uniform he wears. But what kind?
Everything about him seems strangely colorless. He is all grey. His face a blur
of lighter grey floating within darker grey borders.
I suddenly realize I should be frightened, yet I am not.
Again, there is a sense of abandoning…something. Fear perhaps? It is, after
all, Samhain.
Before too long he stands before me. I see he is indeed an
old man. His greyish face is pulled tight against his closed mouth, like a man
clinching his jaws against a long remembered bitter taste. His uniform is now
distinct and clearly old. Civil war I guess. Once again, the thought passes
briefly, I should be scared, but I am not. I am now feeling and acting as a
dreamer in a dream, one I am strangely aware has no power to touch me in any corporal
sense.
The words slip out of my mouth, almost of their own
volition. “Whose color’s do you wear?”
His bright moonlit grey ghost marble eyes turn to me. His
lips part like someone who has forgotten speech, forgotten speech even existed.
I wait in quiet anticipation. Until he finally speaks in a faint whisper.
“Whose colors…..I had forgotten. Color.”
His voice becomes stronger.
“I wore the colors of the cause, son.”
“The cause….”
His eyes, now becoming less distinct in the gather dark,
lift to peer at some unseen horizon. His shoulders straighten with some new
vigor as he speaks, as it turns out, one last time.
“There comes a time when your colors don’t seem to matter so
much. When all you see is red. Red everywhere. Rivers of red, flowing like
tears. Futile, bitter tears. Then everything turns black and finally, finally
everything fades to grey. Nothing but grey. And before long no one even
remembers your name, least wise no one comes to speak it. Everything you ever
worried or fought about, it just don’t matter no more. Then all you want is
rest. You gotta let it go and……rest. That’s where I’m heading. Gonna find that
place.”
I really didn’t know what to say, he seemed so sad and yet,
there was a certain gallantry and calm to his resignation. I couldn’t meet his
eyes, so instead I looked to the ground at my feet. Finally I looked up to face
his gaunt determination and…..
He was gone.
And soon so was I. Back to the warmth and light of home.
