My mother always carried her own sense of natural magic, teaching bits and pieces to me along the way, sometimes directly, sometimes simply in the way she carried herself through life, sometimes in things she left for me to learn on my own.
Occasionally objects appeared out of the blue, like when I was 13 and came home from school one afternoon to find a vintage deck of Muller & Cie tarot cards waiting for me atop my freshly made bed. Or when we drove along otherwise empty nighttime roads and she’d tell tales of rivers and ghosts, birds and banshees. Sometimes the world simply had to wait until after we’d finished our dancing, and I always noticed how her candles were subtly assembled in just the perfect colors whenever I visited in later years. She was a survivor, a lifelong fighter with a spirit so much larger and stronger than her physical presence might otherwise suggest to those who didn’t know any better.
Mom and I shared a propensity for premonitions. We’d share seemingly random dreams only to find afterward something directly related had just transpired—major events in another part of the world, a specific person’s death. We heard music on a deeper level, sometimes singing joyfully along, sometimes in hushed and reverent silence. She was of Sámi blood from the Indigenous people of far Northern Europe, people who are deeply connected with the cycles of the natural world, and when we attended our first yoik (a spirit-filled song of the Sámi) one evening, I heard her softly gasp in that darkened space. She later told me it was as if the notes were penetrating her very soul.
My mother always preferred the night.
Growing up, I generally walked to school since she favored staying up long into the night. She usually indulged in a glass of sparkling red wine while working on whatever needlework or other creative project was currently occupying her in those quiet hours when she could carve out some time to be alone. Or mostly alone, as I often found myself awake too and would quietly sneak out of my room to check on her, sometimes take up an offer for a tiny sip of her wine, and then add a few of my own stitches onto her work. Years later she became a local radio station’s overnight DJ. Basically this meant she ran the entire station on her own from dusk to dawn, as no one else would be there. The nights were hers.
I inherited so much of her spirit, sensitivities, intuitions: her honesty, foresight, a propensity for caring deeply, and sense of fierce loyalty. We both had shared and survived so much, but that one day finally came when her body, a body that fought to protect and support her so many times before, could no longer serve or sustain her.
I was lying on the couch a few hours after she died (in her own bed, just down the hall). It was a soft old couch that had been in the family for decades, and my mother once said she slept extra deeply on it, as if a spirit resided in it that was pulling her in. I’d been caring for her and now found myself also feeling pulled into that couch upon which we’d sat together so many times, in a home that had been her home, a home in which just hours before, she’d released her final breath. A heavy silence had fallen over those rooms like a shroud of mourning. I hadn’t bothered to turn on any lights as evening fell and the day’s colors faded into a shadowed monochrome.
I stretched out, drained from exertion and exhaustion after completing the intensely important work of guiding her spirit home in those final months, our final days, her final moments. With my own eyes now closed, I felt a new-fallen emptiness like a hole in the fabric of life that her newly flown spirit tore through on the way out. Evening faded into midnight, and the room was cast into pitch-black darkness except for the exact spot whereupon I lay. Above me, the ceiling had one narrow, angled skylight, and in that moment I opened my eyes to a brightness and knew I was not alone. Through that sole skylight, precisely centered within its narrow confines from north to south and east to west shone a perfectly full thunder moon. That moon was glowing as clearly and strongly as I’d ever seen, and not even the slightest wisp of cloud dared to veil it. This moon was strong, patient, and caring … it cast a ray of light directly upon me, equally soft and intense. This moon was a light in the darkness, a watchful eye. Of this I have no doubt: On that night the moon carried my mother’s spirit, and as she soared on a flight of foxfire to dance with distant ancestors, she took an opportunity to gaze back, as if to say, You are not alone, our connection remains.
Since then, I have always seen my mother in the moon and feel her spirit witnessing from afar. I greet her, leave offerings beneath rays of moonglow, and sometimes ask questions or seek advice. I’ll sing to her in gratitude, in memoriam, in celebration. My mother, the moon, waxes and wanes, she is sometimes blanketed by thick clouds, or obscured by intense storms crackling with lightning and rain, but above the clouds, her presence remains, gazing down with care, comfort, support, assistance, concern, friendship, and love. On full-moon nights, I feel the connection is especially strong, echoing that first night of my life when my mother was no longer on this earth. Before she died, we agreed that some connections are stronger than life or death. The moon’s radiance has since become a way of expressing, I am still here for you. I will always be here for you.
You may wander the world or sail the seas, but no matter where you find yourself, no matter how dark the night, if you find yourself looking toward that perfect pearl illuminated high in the night sky, the compassionate gaze of an ever-watchful eye will be there, checking in and casting a soft, caring glow. The moon is there to assure you that although all things change, that no matter how much we may gain or lose, there are still some constants too. And one constant is that no matter how alone we might ever feel, there is someone, something, that wants us to be well, that wants us to know we are never truly alone, and, yes, that we are loved.
And the best part about my mother, the moon? It’s that the moon is able to be your mother too, or your grandmother, or an old cat that was your best friend, or perhaps even someone from the distant past you don’t know the name of but who knows the essence of you and wants you to know you aren’t walking this path alone. As our own days wax, reach their peak, and wane, only to renew the cycle again and again, a glowing light on the darkest night remains there to light our way.
