Thursday night, I have my mom pause the show we’re watching so we can go light candles at 9:27 P.M. CST. The moment of time when the earth’s axis is at its farthest from the sun on the shortest, darkest day of the year. The winter solstice.
“Welcome, Winter,”
I say.
My mom says something too and then we leave the candles flickering and return to our show.
When it’s over, I go stand out in the soft rain – it’s rained all day long – and say, “Welcome, Winter,” again up into the thick clouds. Through the thrumming rain.
As I come in from the backyard, pulling up a Swedish Lucia Traditional Celebration on my phone for appropriate solstice background music, my mom comes in from the front where she’s gone (presumably) to admire our Christmas lights.
“Do you want to blow out your candles?” I ask. I’ve blown out my two already.
“It seems like there should be a clear sky and the moon on a solstice,” she says, coming to the table. “Thanks for doing this.”
“Thanks for participating with me,” I say.
I did it for me and for her, and for my dad who’s not with us but who is still very much present in our thoughts, our hearts, our love.
My dad loved ritual. He loved solstices, equinoxes, drum circles, spirit quests, shamanism.
My mom blows out one of her candles. Smoke swirls. For a short, sacred moment, we watch it together. Then she blows out the other one. An observation of time, space, change, transition. A shared moment.
I’d celebrated the last two solstices – summer and last winter – with both my parents. The times blurred together in my memory with lit candles and invocations (on my part) for winter to come. For while I love sunlight, I also love winter, the cold, the hibernating darkness, the short days that encourage writing time, reflection, rest, creativity, deep work.
Now, more than ever, ritual and the calling, acknowledging, ending of seasons seems important.
My mom and I bid each other goodnight. I light a match and take my phone still playing the Lucia songs, a solstice habit I picked up in 2018 at the end of a year of travel when my Swedish friend put it on for his partner and me instead of dragging us off to church somewhere to observe the calling back of light, and go to my room.
The summer solstice candle lighting was the last ceremony I performed along with my dad. I’d felt oddly out of character then with how much I’d wanted to acknowledge the incoming winter on that longest sunlight day. I’d bought candles weeks ahead of time and only invited my parents to join in my lighting of them the morning of. I’d planned for the candles, but hadn’t done any more than that. My dad had asked if we were supposed to say something, do something. “I don’t know,” I’d said. I’d felt symbolic and ridiculous at the same time, both wanting magic and not believing in it. Which is a hard place to find myself. Between belief and disbelief. Rationality and trust (in magic, hope, joy, goodness).
The Lucia concert plays on and I light a single candle in my room.
“Dad,” I say out loud, soft. I want him to be a part of this winter’s beginning. This Christmas. This magical time of the year when kindness swells, decorations sparkle, lights twinkle, smiles rekindle – the magic. The very real kind of magic.
With the candle lit, my invocation uttered, and the music still serenading, I take out the Imperial Dragon Oracle card deck which I’d given to my dad as a Christmas present, last year? The year before? I can’t remember. Time is too short, time is eternal.
I shuffle the deck. Slipping through my fingers, a card turns itself over – Rebirth. I tuck it back in and keep shuffling. Fanning the cards out, I feel out another card. This time what comes up is The Wounded Dragon.
Its traditional name is The Hanged Man. Its energy is Transition. The keyword meaning is Peace.
I cry.
Only a few days ago, my mom’s friend had asked her if she’d tried to contact Dad. I ask my mom, “If you did try, what would you do?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “Your dad was the one who was good at that kind of thing.”
In my own way, like I’m doing now, I’d done my own attempt at contacting him, I’d used the oracle deck on Thanksgiving Day when I was thinking of my dad and the card that had come up that day was Love. It had felt like a direct message. I’d cried then too.
This Wounded Dragon feels like another message. My dad who had identified with water dragons. Who should have lived to be 120. The hanged man. But instead of anger which I’d been so sure he’d still feel on the other side of death (for the unfairness of cancer, for the unfairness of so many things), this message is of transition. From here to there. From pain to rest. From life to peace.
The card’s commentary says, “The Wounded Dragon does not symbolize suffering” which my dad had certainly experienced before he died “but rather the catalyst to release us from old patterns in order to raise spiritual awareness. Suffering only arises out of the things we cannot accept.”
I’d suffered from the thought that my dad hadn’t been able to accept his own death. Or the pain that heralded his path to it.
“Sometimes,” the card continues, “we need to experience pain in order to find the momentum to move forward.” Is this his pain? My mom’s? Mine? All of the above?
I look at the card that had turned itself over – Rebirth. It is number 13 in the deck, the number after the Wounded Dragon. The traditional name for card 13 is Death. The energy is Transformation. The keyword meaning is Rebirth.
On this day, darkness reaches its peak but from that place, from that moment forward the daylight gets a little longer with each passing day; transformation, rebirth, light, life.
The Death card says, “This is a powerful and positive card for it symbolizes complete change.” My dad would like this. He loved symbolism. “Nothing will ever be the same again. Even an apparent misfortune will turn into a blessing. Everything is exactly as it needs to be. When it is time to die, one cannot escape it. But death is always followed by rebirth into a new and higher state of being, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Transformation involves a complete change of reality.”
A clearer message—well, apart from Love on Thanksgiving Day –I couldn’t ask for.
My dad is dead. And, somehow, whatever that means, instead of the anger I feared – there’s peace. There’s transformation, rebirth.
The human experience is strange. I’ve found that being human is a contradiction of actions and reactions. Sometimes I act as if I am truly Gemini. One part of me clings to the rational, the falsifiable, the verifiable, proof. The other me lights candles and turns over Oracle cards.
We find messages where we look for them. I’m glad to find these messages on this night when darkness is most dark, at its longest.
I can cry now. From sadness and joy. And as I do, the phrase, “Joy comes in the morning,” travels through my thoughts, something maybe my dad told me, quoting a Psalm.
Neither darkness nor light lasts forever.
A candle flame is strong enough to see by, read by, write by.
The sun always rises again. And then it sets.
Messages come.
Death happens. But peace does too.
