#death and love

[brightlotusmoon]

Long Distance II

Tony Harrison - 1937-

Though my mother was already two years dead Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas, put hot water bottles her side of the bed and still went to renew her transport pass.

You couldn't just drop in. You had to phone. He'd put you off an hour to give him time to clear away her things and look alone as though his still raw love were such a crime.

He couldn't risk my blight of disbelief though sure that very soon he'd hear her key scrape in the rusted lock and end his grief. He knew she'd just popped out to get the tea.

I believe life ends with death, and that is all. You haven't both gone shopping; just the same, in my new black leather phone book there's your name and the disconnected number I still call.

[morvantmortuary]

I feel a little bit strange today

(in-depth discussion of death and grief to follow - not recent, but still.)

today is the anniversary of the passing of my mom’s only sister, my favorite aunt. she died a little less than a month after I accepted my offer to attend my grad school and signed my contract, six years ago. I’m the first person in my immediate family and hers to go, ever, and I’ve had to do it without her. it never has felt quite right.

I’ve told a couple of people this, but Great Aunt Lula in the October arc is based off her. The final goodbye Maxi describes to Final Them to prove he can see Lula’s ghost and communicate with her was my goodbye with my aunt, exactly how it happened. I didn’t know it was going to be goodbye. at the time, I was heartbroken and a touch angry at not being allowed to come back to the hospital, because I felt like I was being shut out and shoved away.

with this much space between then and now, though, I get it. in the years since, I’ve had to walk into a room and knowingly tell someone goodbye for the last time. that person wasn’t quite there — the closer we get to death, in my experience, the more often our consciousness wanders into kind of an in-between place. it eases the transition, I think. everyone is alive again in our minds, so we don’t always realize if we’re talking to or seeing someone who isn’t there.

but my aunt was still sharp, still conscious, and I know she was one of the people that loved me more than anything, and vice versa. I can see why you would want to spare someone that understanding that this is the last time you’re going to see someone on this side of things, if you can. it’s heavy. we don’t realize how heavy until we have it foisted on us, and at that point, we never get to put it down again.

my love for her and the grief that came from it is at the center of a lot of my work, but especially here at the mortuary. it is the realest thing I know. there’s something about loving someone so much that when they’re gone, it spills over into everything else, because it can’t go to them anymore. it softens the prickly parts, the edges of them that might have hurt you when they were alive. that doesn’t mean they were never there or never existed, it just means that there are some small things you’re willing to overlook to enjoy the memory of their presence. I hid a version of her here because it was the most honest sadness I had in me, and I needed to put it somewhere safe. but I also wanted a place where I could come find her, when I needed to. where I knew she would be there, even if she disapproves of the reader’s questionable company of necromancers lol.

my aunt is the reason I love so much of the spooky nonsense that’s made me who I am. when I was a teenager, we spent summers up late watching my true blood dvds when everyone else had gone to bed. she introduced me to buffy, to charmed, to practical magic, to interview with a vampire, to labyrinth, to a million of the things that helped me discover what inspired me to create on my own. she was a writer and a skilled artist in her own right, and she was always encouraging when I told her about my work. she was the first person that showed me, in her way, that there was nothing wrong with growing up and dedicating your life to your artistic passions, rather than settling just to settle, because you thought you had to.

but I know part of the reason she lived the life she did, one that was quiet and private and a bit secretive, was because she and I had same things going on in our brain. she was from a time this wasn’t thought about or even discussed like it is now, and it impacted her art and her creativity in a way that still guts me to this day. it was an injustice how many beautiful things she never got to finish, how much she never got to share. I wish more than anything I could tell her about my diagnosis now, to tell her how much better I feel, to see if she would want to try the things that helped me so she could thrive too. it’s not fair how much farther I’ve gotten go than she did, in some ways. it’s not fair that my mother, her baby sister, will now be older than she ever will get to see. but all I’ll ever have of her is what she was.

I wish I could show her the Morvants, and Seth, and the little world you guys have helped me build with them. I wish I could tell her about all of you. I wish she could meet my cat, and I could bore her with my research, and she could tell me again about the story she’s still writing.

I miss her every day. I still see her in my dreams more often than not, and when I do, I don’t remember she’s gone until I wake up. but I’m so grateful that she taught me about the love that’s at the heart of loss, because without that I wouldn’t have found my way here to y’all, and that’s everything to me. it takes me a while to write back sometimes, or see things people send me, but whenever I do find it waiting here, it means the entire world to know that I have friends here at the heart of this thing I made that she helped plant the seeds for.

I don’t really know where I’m going with this, I just wanted to talk about her for a while. thank you for humoring me, as always, if you read this far. 🖤

[akumaxeyes-blog]

or·phan {noun} a child whose parents are dead :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

I am that definition. I never in my life thought that in my young age of 32 - I would not have either of my parents' still on this earth. I did not have the grandest of childhoods and I still have this hole in my heart where they should be.

To never hear your voices again. Torture.

To never smell your hugs ever again.

Staring at the phone, dialing the numbers, unanswered rings. Listening to the voicemail answer.. Cause of course your phones are still on because how would I know what you sound like.

How would I remeber?

All the voicemails, good or bad that you both have left me. Kept safe. Except for you, mom.... I lost a lot of yours in what would be the biggest accident. I never let myself forget it.

To know that all my half siblings still have one parent.

Jealousy.

Envy.

Of course, I am happy for them. They will never know the pain I know. Not yet at least. We all perish. Our parents are supposed to come first. No parent should have to bury a child. It was just so sudden. The both of you. 3 years apart. Who would have known. I know I did not. I thought losing one parent was hard - losing two was completely numbing.

[simonefigusart]

"DEEP LOVE"

[morvantmortuary]

(tags by @edencherries bc I thought they were too lovely not to share)

one of the saddest things is when someone in your family tells you you would've loved someone who died before you were born. like my mother has told me & my best friend that we would have loved talking to her father. that me & my brothers have the same humor as our late uncle & even look like him. everyone is everywhere & nowhere & here & gone & dying & coming back. it's as though you know them through their shadow or their ghost or your own actions, but you won't ever really know. haunts me, i guess

[chloesimaginationthings]

You know Henry’s final speech went hard in FNAF

[remarkingonit]

"My mother needs me home." (x Agatha All Along, S01E09)

[symphonyofsilence]

Let the poor man rest.

[claypigeonpottery]

@chiropteracupola

you’re right!! that’s them!!

these babies had some underglaze flaking issues. I touched them up so hopefully they come out alright. they’ll be popped into the kiln tomorrow!

[throesofincreasingwonder]

"A story doesn't need a theme in order to be good" I'm only saying this once but a theme isn't some secret coded message an author weaves into a piece so that your English teacher can talk about Death or Family. A theme is a summary of an idea in the work. If the story is "Susan went grocery shopping and saw a weird bird" then it might have themes like 'birds don't belong in grocery stores' or 'nature is interesting and worth paying attention to' or 'small things can be worth hearing about.' Those could be the themes of the work. It doesn't matter if the author intended them or not, because reading is collaborative and the text gets its meaning from the reader (this is what "death of the author" means).

Every work has themes in it, and not just the ones your teachers made you read in high school. Stories that are bad or clearly not intended to have deep messages still have themes. It is inherent in being a story. All stories have themes, even if those themes are shallow, because stories are sentences connected together for the purpose of expressing ideas, and ideas are all that themes are.

[noknowshame]

why is religious Christmas imagery all so joyful and pleasant? where is the inherent horror of the birth of Christ? A mother is handed her newborn child, wailing and innocent. Her hands come away sticky. Red. Simply by giving her son life she has already killed him. He is doomed from the beginning. Her love will not save him from suffering. Because the thing cradled in her arms is not a baby, it is a sacrifice: born amongst the other bleating animals whose blood will one day be spilled in the name of what demands it. the night is silent with anticipation. Mary, did you know? That your womb was also a grave?

[bethfuller]

jibaro.

find me on instagram!

[bajaja-blast]

you dislike Luke Castellan because he disagreed with an oppressive government system and actually took action to change the abusive ways him and his peers have been forced to follow for millennia.

I dislike Luke Castellan because in the Titans Curse he manipulated Annabeth, who he raised as his little sister, into holding up the sky, the FUCKING sky, for over 20 hours and had the audacity to walk away as though he was completely apathetic towards it while she begged and pleaded with him to help her.

we are not the same.

[urgentkettle]

[hansoeii]

when 2022 me thought it would be fun to draw stede with a beard and a silly little curled up mustache and start calling him steard for the fun of it

AND NOW IT'S REAL

THEY DID IT

MY CREATION.

IT IS REAL. HOLY FUCK