Hallowed Dead

I apologize for the long delay in blog entries. It’s been a hectic time; work, school, writing things that aren’t my blog, and also trying to stay coherent through it all. Needless to say, I’ve felt trapped between that state that is neither waking nor sleeping. I believe it’s called, “Being undead.” Neither blood nor rum compels me to rise. It’s a mix of tea and stubbornness.

I’m taking time out from the novel that will not end, so that I can make a Halloween post. I wasn’t sure what to write this year. I told a ghost story last year; one that my mother shared. This year, I have no ghosts to share.

Sort of…

Like most people interested in the macabre my exposure started at a young age. Like anyone else I don’t focus on it twenty-four-seven. I have a variety of interests, and yet I will often find myself gravitating toward the Gothic, the ghoulish, and ghostly. Partly it’s because so much of history is wrapped up in such things. But also, because it’s part of my worldview. How could it not be? I think our ancestors had a better grip on the netherworld than we do. I mean that in the sense that “memento mori” wasn’t just a suggestion, it was a command. How many of us take that to heart? How many of us take for granted that we’ll probably live into our twilight years, barring severe illness or accident? There’s a reason that carpe diem became part of our lexicon. “Man born of woman have but short time to live.” That benediction didn’t say anything about women born of women, did it? No wonder women live longer!

I’ve never had a problem watching horror films, or anything associated with them. As a child I’d seen Frankenstein with Boris Karloff many times. I’d even seen 80’s horror classics such as Fright Night, The Lost Boys, and House at ages when I may have been a bit too young for them. I was, after all, an 80’s child. We were made of stern stuff back then. Our vampires didn’t sparkle. Our houses were haunted by Poltergeist. Our ectoplasm was green and sticky. There was a gleefully icky sense of fun that I feel most modern horror lacks. Though there have been notable exceptions. I feel that the new Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is a breath of fresh air. Though it’s based on a comic book, it doesn’t feel like it’s referencing anything. It is its own beast, so to speak—one that doesn’t feast on the “long pork” of other horror franchises. I find that it’s been a great palate cleanser, if you’ll pardon the pun. It harkens back to when horror was horror—not just cheap jump scares and simplistic plots. It’s thoughtful, creative, and has a sense of humor. But, my opinion of Sabrina and her enchanting adventures are a discussion for another time.

As a child I had Remco action figures of Frankenstein’s Monster and Dracula. I had various other assorted monster figures as well. Once October first came it was time to decorate every square inch of the house with Halloween items; from the ceramic haunted house, to the paper ghosts, vampires, bats, and other assorted “things that go bump in the night.” It was a time of magic for me, and it still is. It’s my favorite holiday, and the one that brings me the most joy. I still decorate for it and get dressed up in some costume or other. This year was no exception.

            As a child, I once asked my mother, “Why do we wear costumes for Halloween?”

            She replied, “To scare away the evil spirits.”

            She told me about our Irish ancestors, and their custom of Halloween. How it was a time to remember their beloved dead, but also to confront their fears. In recent years there’s been scholarship into Halloween as a sort of Celtic new years celebration, but that’s another story for another time. Suffice to say my mother echoed that phrase, “Memento Mori.” But also, “Fear not!”

            As a young child I was okay with fake death in films and television. I knew it wasn’t real, and so it didn’t bother me. I know that if I saw an actor get cacked in movie that they’d come back for another film soon after. I knew that the creatures on the screen weren’t real. But I liked their stories and wanted to know them. I couldn’t look away while others turned their heads. I think I’m still like that. It explains a great deal of why I’m always trying to read people, so to speak.

            However, real death was something else. There was an old spooky cemetery that we’d drive past late at night. It was on the way home from my aunt and uncle’s place in the next town over from us. I should point out that watching Tales From the Darkside would sometimes precede this, but other times it did not. Regardless, I know that George A. Romero’s Spooktacular show was just that, a show. This old cemetery was something else. It contained the real dead. At night it looked 

otherworldly. The tombstones were like black monoliths that absorbed all light. Even if a full moon was overhead they still absorb its rays and would reflect none. I would imagine the dead rising from those obsidian tombs. I would duck every time we passed that cemetery, and not look again it was safely behind us.

            That was to eventually change.

            My maternal grandmother died when I was eleven. It was sudden, and she was the first person I’d known to have died. I wasn’t permitted to attend the funeral, and so I didn’t see her laid out. However, I did visit the cemetery both before, and after, her tombstone was placed. It was a different cemetery than the spooky one we passed on those cold late nights. I could feel the soles of my feet burning as I stepped on the hallowed ground. My pulse quickened but I didn’t back down. I walked to my grandmother’s grave with my mother by my side. I didn’t say anything to the grave, as I thought that would be odd. But I didn’t feel spooked either.

            Soon after that I began to explore things a bit further. It was an attempt to understand “The veil between life and death,” as Poe put it. Reading classic horror literature, watching shows on the supernatural and unexplained. Macabre history, and the like. Then I read the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series by Alvin Schwartz, with illustrations by Stephen Gammel. I began to learn that horror has a heritage based in all cultures. It’s part of our identity as humans. The dead are not the opposite of us, they are us. There is no us and them. As the epitaph says, “As you are now, I once was. As I am now, you will one day be.”

            Memento Mori.

            Now, I don’t want to give the impression that I’m a morbid sort. Well, not entirely morbid. Those who read this blog will know that. But, to see a skeleton is to see yourself without your skin on, isn’t it? We can’t divorce ourselves from the natural world, no matter how hard we try. Perhaps the sanitized version of death we have now has harmed us in a way. It’s made death into a form of disease instead of a course of time. I’m all for hanging on to every last moment there is. If vampires were real you better believe I’d present my neck for puncturing. Sleeping all day is a small price to pay for immortality. To clarify, I have no desire to die. My concern is that death and the hereafter went from being a spiritual and visceral experience to a sanitized and packaged experience. Funeral homes lost their spookiness. Graveyards have snazzy marble monuments, not big Gothic, “Look at me, baby, I’m dead sexy,” cenotaphs. Death lost its character when we wrapped it up in ribbons and rebranded it with euphemisms, and then tried to shut it out of our lives. We took away its sting and made it clinical. The grim reaper may as well be wearing a clown nose. Which is difficult because his nose is all gone. The baroque and gothic gave way to sunshine and lollipops. black lollipops, but still…

            When my own mother died, I wasn’t prepared for it. Nothing can prepare you for that. But in the moments when she was dying, I found myself asking the paramedics, “Do we know if electricity is going to her brain?” That little bit of horror trivia helped me to focus. Though there was no tesla-coil resurrection for my mother, I took some comfort in the thought. Even when I heard her make the infamous croaking sound, I knew what it was. Or, when I saw her eyes move under their lids, in a mockery of REM sleep, I knew what that was. I knew what these things were and what they meant. I knew about them from a young age and was not afraid of them.

            I’ve written about the death of my mother in greater detail elsewhere, and so I won’t recount it all here. If you want to read about that, then search for the entry titled My Mother’s Passing. It was from 2016.

               The first Halloween without her I took some time out to talk to her. Since then I haven’t really said much. There are all sorts of different thoughts about how or if our loved ones see us after death. I believe there’s an afterlife but can’t define what it is. Only the dead know that. What I do know is that once a year we can feel that the veil is lifted. We get a chance to peer into what may lay beyond. We contemplate our own mortality, while also honoring the spirit of childhood play and imagination. We are reminded that life doesn’t run in a straight line, but in a series of cycles. The so-called Wheel of the Year is about to turn again. Perhaps that is another reason to celebrate Halloween. We honor the loved dead, but we also honor life. We confront what Lovecraft called, “The greatest and oldest fear…the unknown.” We look the netherworld in the face and we take power by taking on our nightmares or living our fantasies; even if only for one month or one night a year.

            Now that I think about it…perhaps, my mother was right.

Copyright Riley Joyce 2018

              

All photos: Copyright Riley Joyce 2016 and 2018, respectively. The first photo is from Trinity Churchyard in Stratford-Upon-Avon, Warwickshire. The second photo is from the crypt cafe in St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London. 

More about that later...