November is my time to remember. My mind turns moist again with memories... wet as webs on a misty morning. I call and recall the past to come back and visit with me, hug me for awhile and make me happy.( I remember that I wrote these words and the words that follow for Halloween 1976)
I feel sad in a way that feels good. Glad I was born in November on my grandfather's birthday. He, a mighty man, who cried when I went away and cried again when I came home. Tears always near, to water the growth of his love. My mother was born on the 9th and my sister died on the 6th, on the feast of all Irish saints. Her death washed my face with a waterfall and her death on the wet road still hangs heavy on my heart.
So I'm sad. Sad that the leaves have to fall. Sad that the branches will be bare. Sad that there has to be winter of weary waiting. But I'm glad that I'm sad because I know that I love. To me love is not the burning passion of the sun parching the earth into madness but rather the soft sadness of the rain falling on the fields. There, it dies at the feet of the flowers and gives them life and bloom and beauty.
Come then, and put your tear in our common cosmic cup. Come, Holy Christ and change this salty water into wine to gladden the heart of the world. Come together on the Halloween, the hallowed evening of All the Saints and the holy day of All the Souls. Come with your horn full of hope and your basket full of memories. Come and take a stand against the Fall and give a birth against the death that has to be.
Come, collective Memory of Humankind and gather up the precious pieces of the past and save "the way we were", until the future comes. O Saving Spirit of Total Recollection, collect all the people. Search out every nook and cranny of the universe. Search the air for the dust they have turned to.... Search down in the depths of the sea where their little bits of bones have gone to...Sift the soil of the earth for the cold clay that once was warm, walked and smiled in the days gone by.....Replay all the good words that have been spoken since near-mute man and woman muttered their first sounds to each other. Catch the songs that have been sung and all the air that was made a prayer in a plea to God.
Gather up, Great Harvester, the life-struggle of your people, the labor pain of the birth and the breaking pain of death. In between, the sharing and caring, striving and longing, hoping and hanging on and on and on.....The laughter and crying, the suffering and dying, the giving and forgiving, the whole bit.....from the first smile in Eden to the moment you read this line. O God Almighty, save the good people who are gone.
Michael Doyle