In this month when the veils thin and our attention turns towards those whom we held dear during life. As humans, we learn how to live by noting when, where, and how to show up. Each day that we breathe air, we make a choice as to how we show up in our lives for ourselves, for our various traditions, for our neighbors, and for our world. The art of showing up is the art of living.
My first lesson in learning how to show up came a number of decades ago when my father’s mother helped to welcome my entry into womanhood on my 12th birthday – the day my period arrived. I don’t recall much about the weather, other than it being a typical hot Baltimore summer. Various entries from Songs in the Key of Life, barely a year old, blasted from cars parked along the tree-lined streets in her quiet neighborhood. My grandmother’s home, a small two-bedroom one-level home with weathered dark brown wood on the outside, creaky uneven yellow steps and a painted gray porch floor was located on a dead end street that backed up to an old red brick high school with a black asphalt playground. Two basketball hoops with missing nets dotted the end closest her home.
Altar to Hecate – Image credit: Sosanna – WikiCommons
Although plain and easily overlooked, the house reminded my family and in particular my grandmother that she had won the city housing lottery. She would have been in her early sixties and barely three years past a masectomy left her wearing white bras with a built in sand-bag meant to approximate a breast. While I don’t know if she had a simple mastectomy or a radical masectomy, I do remember how her bra was so heavy that I dropped it when I picked it the first time. Looking back, I am sure that her status as an older Black woman long separated from a husband she never divorced living on social security impacted the care she could or would receive.
My grandmother showed up for me: she made what could have been an awkward moment, the start of menstruation, a blessing and a pleasant memory that I would draw upon years later. Although my parents were present that day, they responded in a practical manner. My grandmother truly made the choice to be fully present in a way that benefitted me as an individual.
When I converted to Judaism in my early 20s, my grandmother proudly showed up for the Friday night Shabbat service after the formal rites of testing by the Beis Din (religious court), immersion in the mikvah (ritual bath), and blessings. I had chosen to invite all who helped on my religious journey: this meant literally everyone in my family, my friends, and all of my co-workers. I fondly recall how this woman in her late 70s, frail from decades of day labor as a maid – the only work she could do as a Black woman in during the Great Depression and post-World War II economic boom era – made her way through the synagogue. She might not have understood or agreed with my choices religiously, but she showed up to witness and to acknowledge my new religion.
Showing up in a religious sense means taking a visible stance to support another person whether that person agrees or worships in the same manner or not. It is respecting that each of our beings has the right, and in fact, the responsibility to lay claim to who and what we believe. As an adult, what and who we choose to support is easier when friends and family choose to be present fully for the individual.
Years later, my very Christian grandmother showed up again from the underworld a few years after her passing. As I began my journey into Paganism with my first Samhain ritual, my grandmother showed up for me again: she literally appeared in the cauldron and spoke to me. I remember first being shocked that I got to see a dead person at my first Samhain ritual. Shock soon gave way to tears and incessant crying for ten to twenty minutes because I did not expect a die-hard Baptist, former lover of 100-proof Old Grandad, born-again Christian, and part-time Christian minister to love me as a witch from beyond the grave.
Any doubts I had about my grandmother as my ancient, a near-ancestor being in support of my chosen path were quickly dashed about a year later when I got a direct message during a tarot reading at a local metaphysical shop. While the reader seemed to be used to dead relatives popping up during readings, I was shocked at the words conveyed: “Don’t forget the old ways.”
My grandmother had done it again – only this time, she managed to address a hidden question of mine: how to be fully Pagan when my origins were a mixture of Christianity, Judaism, and a period of public religious uncertainty.
To show up for my ancestors, for the lineage that preceded me, I needed to not forget the old ways.
Be a good neighbor and friend. Listen to your overwhelmed friend who is a new parent who wants to vent. Take food or groceries to your neighbor living in a house where someone is ill or where someone has died. Mow the lawn for the neighbor who cannot do so. Celebrate a child’s birthday party. Invite those near you to rejoice during the holiday time. Drive or escort someone to medical treatment or the hospital. Stand up for what you believe. Keep your friends close.
Showing up can happen in many ways. During this time of honoring those who have died, one way of showing up is to be present fully during the dying process. In the case of my father, showing up meant acknowledgement of death itself. In bending over and putting my ear to the center of his chest, feeling his warm skin, hearing the echo in my ear that is my own pulse – I show up to honor his passing. The moment when the absence of the echo, and the realization that the constant beat of the heart is no more is a precise point of showing up.
Birth has many who show up to celebrate the entry of new life to this world and plane of existence.
Death usually has few who bear witness or show support. As my father died at home, my mother grabbed my hand to pull me away from the image of the covered body on a stretcher leaving the house. I remembered standing in the kitchen with yellow walls gleaming bright. As I attempted to recall happier times enjoying my father’s laughter and his cooking, I knew it is important to stamp into my memory my father at that moment, as he left the house. I burned the image into my senses.
When someone dies, the most honored spot is for one who stays the house while others mourn and bury the recently departed. Looking back, I remember showing up by sitting at the quiet shrine to my aunt’s former life. Surrounded by mementos in a dining room, framed by seventies era white wood paneling with the faux grain divided by dark brown vertical lines, I show up for a woman who is a devout Christian. She would never agree with my embrace of Paganism, but she would understand the goal of doing the right thing.
Sometimes showing up means doing the act that is small and not glamorous. It allows memories of time with the ancestors to gather in one’s thoughts and heart. Each of us will die at some point, perhaps in gratitude for others who show up for us during our time of need.
During my mother’s end-times, showing up meant the act of simultaneous celebration and mourning in death anticipation with bodily grief. To show up in this manner was a more traditional pattern: the greatest support we can give to each other is to care for the body itself. To show up by providing food, shelter, entertainment, regardless of one’s own physical tiredness is a gift to the one who is in need.
The art of showing up is the art of living. At this sacred time, we often speak of our connections with the ancestors, our near-deceased relatives, and the conversions we hope to have as the veils thin. When we provide actions and support for the living, we demonstrate how we might or will show up when it counts.
Death is just another doorway, a chance to embrace the relations with our loved ones from a different angle.
As we mourn, as we remember, as we seek connection, and as we embrace our own fears, let us recall how we can show up for ourselves, each other, and our ancestors.
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