Death is everywhere this month.
As Anna Franklin writes in The Hearth Witches Year, November is a “time to acknowledge the role of death, seasonally and personally, and mourn what has passed and remember what has been.”
As well as the Gaelic festival of Samhain, there is Halloween on the 31st October, followed by All Saints Day and All Souls Day, and a couple of weeks later by Remembrance Day. Personally, this season starts for me with half term, a reminder that it was in half term two years ago that Bethany and I first suffered from the cold that was the start of her illness, and I am sure that it was no coincidence that I have been ill with a cold each October half term since her death. I was grateful, at least, that my university course had a reading week so I didn’t have to miss any lectures or workshops, but missing my Octet rehearsal as well as my new university singing groups only added to the feelings of grief and general grumpiness when I know what an important part singing plays for my mental health.
This year, I thought November would be easier than last year, and in some ways it is. But then, after two years, others have forgotten that this was the month in which she died and general life is so much more normal that the overwhelming nature of grief feels like a backwards step.
I’m also the busiest with work that I’ve been since two years ago. I’ve taken on my first new retained client since Bethany died, and have heavy work at four separate clients (I’m an HR consultant). Things like proposed redundancies, grievances and disciplinaries which I struggle with even when I’m at my best, feel even tougher this month. I am thankful that Bethany’s anniversary date is on a Saturday this year, and after having to start a difficult work project on my birthday last year, I have booked two days of annual leave at the end of the month to give me a break.
I’m very aware that helping clients through difficult and emotional employee issues is what they pay me for, and that it isn’t their fault that suddenly a number of them are having serious issues at the same time. Added to that, why should they be aware of the impending anniversary, or understand the complexities of how the body holds on to and remembers trauma, or how connected being overworked at this time of year is to my experience of grief.
Two years ago, when Bethany was off school ill with a viral infection that just wouldn’t shift, I was struggling with a very similar overwork situation that left me feeling sleep deprived, anxious, and guilty that my work was making it difficult for me to spend as much time as I wanted to looking after her or just keeping her company. So even when I know all the techniques to try and calm down my nervous system and be gentle with myself to help my feel a sense of safety, what usually works doesn’t work quite so effectively in November.
Books like The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk and Wisdom of your Body by Hilary LMcBride help us understand how complex traumatic grief and other significant negative experiences can be, leaving a mark on our bodies however much we try and convince ourselves that everything is fine as we attempt to carry on as normal. The body remembers what we try at times to forget.
I read Katie Hawkins-Gaar’s most recent My Sweet Dumb Brain Substack post this week, in which she wrote that
Some days, some weeks, some months, are heavier than others. These are the times when bad things have happened, when our lives are forever changed. Our minds may not always note the date, but our bodies typically do. On these days, we feel out of sorts — we feel sad, anxious, or irritable, and we’re not entirely sure why. Our bodies nudge us along. Then we remember.
I’ve realised that even the smallest thing can trigger a grief memory that makes me sad, such as trailers for the start of I’m a Celebrity on tv a painful reminder that the launch show was the last programme I watched with Bethany on the day she was later rushed into hospital.
We shouldn’t minimise the effect that November has on any of us, even if death isn’t quite such a prominent theme as it is for me. Lia Leenderts in this years Almanac explains how the Celts called Novembers moon The darkest depths moon or the mourning moon. She writes that their preoccupation with death echoes what is happening in nature, with darkness increasing and the leaves falling off the trees.
In Dawn Nelson’s 1st November newsletter here on Substack she writes that
In story, underworlds are dark, dank places, places long cut off from the light afforded the upper world, places where nothing good will occur. Social constructs reinforce this. The need to continue being productive, continue with the routine and fill the space with neon lights to convince ourselves we do not need the dark of the underworld. That is not so. Darkness is a very necessary place and if we play by their rules and do not lose ourselves to theses spaces, then underworlds can offer us a sanctuary. Be sure of yourself and do not look back. Behave with reverence within the liminal space. Only take what you need and you will emerge from the underworld wiser and stronger.
That time between the magic of Samhain and the dark days of the winter solstice are a time of quietutde for me. A time of contemplation, recharging and preparation. A time to retreat to the underworld. Modern life and rhythms of work do not always allow a total immersion in the coming dark in order to recharge, but in one way or another there is a time of hunkering down, even if it’s just the acts of stacking wood in the wood store, making jars of mince meat, adding the thermal covering to the chicken’s coop and feeding the Yuletide fruited cake.
So while I can’t retreat completely into the darkness this month, as the rhythms of work and life don’t allow it, an acceptance that the darkness is necessary and unavoidable will help it feel more bearable (and we have plans to make jars of mincemeat this weekend.)
I love your writing and my thoughts are with you for this emotional anniversary. November is the month my mum was admitted to hospital and, though she died in December, it feels very heavy at the moment.
Beautifully written. We have lost a lot of long-term patients at work the last couple of months and the loss upon loss begins to create a very heavy feeling. Remembering Bethany with fondness xxx