Our local Rector was very dismissive about Halloween this morning at the weekly Soul Space meditation. Understandable; we’ve turned it into a festival of fancy dress and chocolate rather than the time of understanding that this is the time of year when the veil between this world and the next is believed to be at its thinnest; when the spirits of the dead can most easily communicate with the living again.
Pagans understand this. For them, the festival is Samhain (pronounced ‘sow’inn’) — the Feast of the Dead.
Christianity adopted it (as we adopted most things) and called it All Hallows’ Eve, and the dead were remembered and honoured. We follow it with All Saints Day which is appropriate, the saints also being dead.
But nowadays we humans rarely go into the profound depths of such a festival as pretty much all Christian rituals are celebrated with chocolate. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the dark stuff but I’m also all for the dark stuff.
I’m pretty good with dead folk. When you’re in my line of business (the vicar bit, not the comedian bit), you really do need to be cool around the whole dying and death shebang. And why not? The dead are cool about it. They often turn up for their own funerals — which is not the reason why facilitating a funeral is scarier than doing stand-up — it’s the living who are going to get upset if something goes wrong. The dead frequently giggle.
As a trained exorcist (and yes, I have the same initials as Merrily Watkins but she’s not based on me — my daughter’s slightly less bonkers and I can cook), it’s part of my job to mediate between the living and the dead and this has, for the very first time, given me the opportunity to write publicly about that.
Firstly, dead people aren’t depressed about it. Being dead, that is. It’s rather like going to the dentist as a kid; you are scared as anything in the waiting room and there may be a moment of discomfort if you need an anaesthetic but afterwards, there’s a lollipop and an angel to take you home. That’s a bit simplistic, obviously, and there are special rooms where murderers, dictators and people who hog the middle lanes of motorways have to hang out for a while until they’ve seen some sense and said ‘sorry’ but death, as a general rule, is not a problem.
I’m organising an event in my home town of South Tawton, Devon, for an amazing guy called Stephen Jenkinson who’s a ‘GriefWalker’ and who’s written a book called ‘Die Wise.’ He’s travelling all over the UK this November, so keep a look out for him. His mantra is that if we love people, the best gift we can give them is our own good death. If we can die wise, we can help others approach this somewhat obligatory rite of passage themselves in a happier way. In Stephen’s Native American tradition, the souls of the dead take a canoe down the river that is the Milky Way to the Happy Hunting Grounds and it is our tears for them that build their paddle. Grief is important, needs to be honoured and so do the ancestors. That’s what Samhain/Halloween is for.
So how do I know that there’s a life to move on to after death? Am I not just touting the party line?
No. I know. How do I know? Because I visited a medium after my own husband died and she was able to bring him through. It was definitely Henry because he was just as annoying dead as he had been when he was alive … and that’s not actually a joke.
What other evidence to I have? It’s a tricky one, like the whole God thing. You can only prove things that are physically existent so it’s not about proving anything. It just Is, in an Isn’t kind of way.
This is one of the things that happened to me while leading a funeral. It’s not the only one either. Lots of weird stuff happens at funerals. Good weird stuff.
I won’t give the guy’s name or his family’s but he was an Elvis fan and his daughter was called Angeline from Elvis’s song Sweet Angeline.
He’d died two weeks after his own mother’s death. One night he dozed off while watching the TV and woke up dead. Careless of him, obviously, but these things happen. Trouble was, he didn’t realise that anything quite so profound had happened and was wandering around being confused. I don’t know why he missed the Angel Train but he had. Some people just do and that’s the real reason that there are exorcists — to help the confused people through. Not a lot of demons to deal with really.
Anyway, this guy turned up at his own funeral and was trying to get people to notice him and I did. Don’t ask me how I did; train as an exorcist yourself if you really want to know. But the thing is, if you think you’ve spotted a soul, you simply have to go along with it in this line of business, even if you think you’re behaving like an idiot and simply making things up. If you’re not going to give the earthbound dead a chance and show them the way through then you’re pretty much a waste of space.
He knew I’d spotted him but waited politely until the hymn when I could hide behind the little podium and have a chat, telling, him that it was his own funeral. “Oh,” he said. “I thought it was Mum’s.”
He wanted to talk to Angie right then and there but she was too sad to pick him up so, instead, he asked me if being cremated hurt. Bless him. No, it doesn’t but I did go downstairs with him afterwards to see his body through. My local crematorium staff are pretty used to the Mad-Vicar-Who-Talks-Them-Through-It nowadays (I had to work in the crem for a week as part of seminary so I’m not afraid of the process any more — it used to scare me witless).
The guy had found his Pathway by then so he knew what to do, but he said he had one more thing to complete before moving on so we said goodbye and I went home as usual thinking I’d made the whole thing up.
The next morning, the phone rang. It was Angie. “You said to me afterwards that you were sure Dad was at the funeral,” she said.
“Yes, he was,” I said, cautiously.
“Well you were right!” she said. “After the Wake, I went back to his house just to have a bit of time on my own. When I went in, the jukebox turned itself on and started to play Sweet Angeline the song he named me for. That must have been him, mustn’t it? The jukebox wasn’t even plugged into the wall.”
Yes, that was him. He wanted her to know how much he loved her.
So this Halloween, eat as much chocolate as you like but also, let yourself and your children think about your beloved dead and see if they’ll slip through the veil and give you a cuddle. I know they’d like to.
