Making sense of death

The Difference Between a Mystic and a Madwoman, is a Mystic Knows When to Keep Her Mouth shut…And, when to open it. 

Writing is the way of recording most revered in The U.S. The Power of The Written word. As my Central Vermont Community ought to be reeling from a death within our community, we are not.

I’m searching for the FEELING. Reaching into the essay form, to zap those hearts into empathy.

I revert to the written word. Away from song, and sound, and shout and scream and  storytelling. Back, to the place where an editor can pick apart the heart of the tale and impale it on a dangling participle.

Because that is the language best understood by the People of The Frozen Hearts. 

I didn’t know the thirteen year old white boy with the curly brown hair and a smile that only reaches half of his face, in the photos that circulated for the two days while he was a missing person.

Now he is a dead person. In a culture that mutters, “So sorry for your loss” and quickly scurries away. Like crabs.

To say more might be unkind. At least, to say more face to face or  heart to heart with a neighbor might be unkind. For reasons still a mystery to me, the anonymity of typing or texting messages allows the unkind to lash out with diatribes on bullying and who’s fault it is that a child no longer breathes in and out here on this earth plane. 

So many words. So many thoughts. So many opinions. 

So little heart. 

At the heart of the matter is the fact that Vermont– like so many other places and spaces here in the U.S. faces an epidemic in suicide. Which goes side by side with alcohol use. And gun use (against SELF, in suicide). 

And, at the heart of this essay that I write today is a white child; a person assigned male at birth who found their life unlivable and did something about it. 

The Mystic in me awakens, as my psychic centers open, as this newly traveling spirit wanders, dazed and a little confused, before continuing on their journey. In my eclectic tradition, I would respond to the news of this death with a Wiccan-sourced “Hail, the Traveler”:

"Hail the Traveler! 

We commit you back from where you came

— to the arms of your ancestors.

 May there be peace where there was anger.

May there be healing where there was hurt.

Go quickly to the place that your old ones called home.

For those who grieve for your passing, let there be healing.

For those who grieve for who you were, let there be healing.

For those who grieve for what you could have been, let there be healing.

Hail the Traveler. We celebrate your journey."

Quetta Garrison-Madsen

I shudder to think of the religions that make suicide wrong, adding so much difficulty to an already unbearable situation. 

Thanks be to Spirit for language and meaning that deepens my experience of this terrible event. Let grief shared be grief diminished. 

And for David Hill III? May his wandering search for acceptance and love that evaded him on this plane lead him into the Light. 

Now he is everywhere. Now, he is everything.