Still Alive

Contemplating Death on the Night of Spirits

The sudden news of a relative that has died keeps me up writing this and won’t let me sleep until I share it.

It is the night of spirits.

Henkien yö, spirits' night, is what I call it in Finnish. But I think this holiday is actually called the day of saints. Pyhienpäivä.

I imagine the light from my phone screen painting my face ghastly white as I lie in bed, writing these words on my notes app.

My toddler is sleeping in their bed next to me, with their soft breaths forming a gentle background hum.

I'm thankful they're asleep so they don't see their mother frenetically writing with her face painted by white light.

When someone dies, there is a sudden shift where the person gets replaced with the memories we have of them. Their physical presence gets replaced by an absence that we fill with our own memories and perceptions.

Or maybe this is due to my own distance. I am in another country and will not witness the person in this departed form. This leaves me with more space for my memories of them instead.

But I wonder, how much of our memories and our perception of them is aligned with their own view of themselves?

When they were alive, at least we had the option to ask them directly. To at least try to get closer to their view. But now that option is gone.

Or is it?

In ancestral veneration, you can communicate with the spirits of people who came before. I have tried this intentionally, and I have also spoken with my dead grandmothers in dreams. (In the dream, they were living together in a shared cabin, making pancakes for me and my child who were visiting. It felt like a sacred temple for the archetype of grandmothers/ crones/ wise women)

And yet, I can't say that it's the same as when I spoke to them when they were alive.

I'm not a medium. Or at least not a strong enough one to experience conversations with departed people as vividly as with alive ones. It is different.

Or maybe my departed relatives have moved on enough so that what's left is simply some fraction of energetic residue.

That feels true to me. It feels like they traveled on somewhere and I can't really reach them in the same way anymore. I don't feel any ghosts lingering around. Just some discreet residue, that may as well simply be a reflection of my own memories.

So in a way, all I have left really might be these memories. My own limited view of them.

And in some cases, not even my own memories, but the stories I have been told about people who died before I was even born.

I have the handcrafted pillow of my great-grandmother's, whom I never met. But as I was mending it with new fabric, I could swear she was guiding my hand. And yet, I don't believe she is really lingering around as a ghost. There's just some kind of a connection to her through that pillow, that she put so much effort into, all those years ago. I guess that's what I mean when I say that I believe energy is real. There's some kind of energy there, though I don't understand exactly what.

When I'm gone, I don't think I'm going to linger around too much either.

Or how can I know?

I hope I can move on to where I'm supposed to go next. Whether it's some new existence or simply a nothingness/everythingness.

But maybe there will be something that will linger, some residue energy. And of course, all these things that I actually leave behind: the words, the visuals, the sounds... And any impressions or memories that others have of me.

When I no longer exist here in this form, you can remember me just the way that you do. Color me with the light of your memories of me, whatever they are.

All the perceptions of me are their own truths. And the me that is moving on to somewhere/nothing else, is also it's own truth.

Maybe I will become a new me, or cease to be a me.

But now, the eyes of this me that is alive in this form and writing this are aching from today's crying and the late hour. The phone screen's light is stinging my eyes.

This discomfort reminds me how I am still here, still very much alive.

And since you are reading this, I am guessing that you might be alive too.

I am grateful for this life. However long I have left, whatever pains or sorrows also comes with this (and now, mourning a death) I believe it is a precious flicker of a life.

I am also grateful for the death, for reminding me to be grateful for the life, and for all those soft little breaths from the bed next to mine.

Still here,

Still alive.

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