It is deathly still today. Maybe that’s just me - deathly is what I feel inside - the outside world is alive - the birds are active - seeking food, hanging with mates and building nests for the spring - but inside I feel dead.

A long time coming this dying - and yet I must partake of the feast of death - Día de los Muertos the Mexicans call it. The remembrance of all that has passed. And the passing is significant - not because it is always hard to break up - but because of what else is under my dark waters - grief that grips me in a therapy session - old wounds that are asking for their day in the sun - why must they come now when I’m already down, already hurting?

They come when they will and the question is: will you give them space to breath - to be?

They are only a part of you - but you could numb them with tv, too much booze - looking for another to take the place of that gaping hole of my own heart - that one place asking for you to feel the cut edges of your pruned limbs - to kneel on the wet winter grass and let that feeling sink in.

This is their request and perhaps we must go to the forrest alone to really receive them - make a feast space for these hurt parts that long to be seen and integrated into the rest of this family inside of me.

I do not know for sure - but that is my inkling - not a pleasant offer for Matariki celebrations, but it is here and I am listening.