Birthdays, Anniversaries, and TDOR

I love birthdays, especially mine. Not because of doing anything special for them, although that's nice, but because it means I survived another year, which is a big deal to me as someone who has been suicidal. It's also a personal New Year's, a time for me to take stock. And in the same week, we have the ( Read more... )

Writing Farewell to a Love

While I was on a religious retreat with some other Dionysians, some of us were talking about this project, and especially for the need for mourning rituals. One of them spoke up and said that when her husband died, she had no idea of the kinds of possibilities that home funerals offered, and that she wished she’d known ( Read more... )

Aftermath

Sorry, folks, expect posts to be a bit thin on the ground for a while. I'm heartsick, terrified, and depressed, hurting too bad to write much ( Read more... )

Field of Dreams, the movie

So, after that message at Samhain -- a message that wasn't even for me -- I decided maybe I should watch this old movie, give it another chance ( Read more... )

The Fire Rose by Mercedes Lackey ( Read more... )

Field of Dreams and Mirrors

Halloween night, I did my regular ritual, including a brief check-in with my Dead via oracle deck. (I used to do a whole thing for the Dead on Samhain, but the farther into Hellenism I get, the less interested I am in that.) And then I put down a few more cards to see what happened, and what happened was a message for a ( Read more... )

Today there was a glitch that means there are TWO posts to read on Rewriting Death.

Movie: A certain Kind of Death

A Certain Kind of Death is a documentary from 2003 about the work of the LA Coroner’s office and legal processes that surround dead bodies. The movie tracks several bodies after their discovery through the process of trying to find ( Read more... )

The Purpose of Wailing

A nigh-universal feature of Greek funerals was the wailing of women, as they beat their breasts and tore at their hair. This was originally the province of women of the household of the deceased, but they were eventually joined by professional mourners.

A Comic Look at Death Preparedness

This summer, Randy did a storyline (beginning here; content note: first comic mentions a sex toy) in which main character Davan and his wife Vanessa discuss death preparedness. It’s far from the only time S*P has addressed serious topics, including Alzheimer’s, miscarriage, and the sudden death of a close ( Read more... )

Labyrinths

Many of us have daydreams of having a piece of land, often out away from the city, where we can have rituals, shrines, maybe even a temple. My personal version of this is the Earth Labyrinth dream.