A Grief Ritual

Speaking the language of the soul

My mum has cancer. On Monday she went through an eight-hour operation to remove a mass on her esophagus.

I don’t normally share big personal stories but if we don’t share our stories how do we learn from one another? So many of us go through ill health with our parents and I want to hear how this has been for others. How do others navigate this emotional landscape?

From left to right

• The shield stone for protection

• Small wooden branch knot that reminds me of the Great Goddess

• Circle of ‘Celtic Soul Prayer Beads - Antler tipped (from the Cailleach’s fairy Cattle - red deer antler from Glen Cailleach & a Brighid set of ‘Celtic Soul Prayer Beads’ with a small Brighid’s cross made from Irish wood).

• Large Eye of the Cailleach stone from the stream in Glen Cailleach - The All Seeing Eye of the Crone.

I began Monday morning with a little ritual. I’ve heard many folks say they don’t do ritual as they don’t have a like-minded community or even know where to start. Ritual can be small and silent, a gesture of how you feel and what needs to be expressed.

Ritual can be a quiet and sacred thing, hands moving in a gesture guided by the soul, expressing what we don’t have words for.

I took my little cloth grandmother doll, which I made when my mum went through chemo, made with some of her clothes.

I laid down some dried mugwort leaves I had gathered the other day and placed them into a silver bowl, adding the doll and a favorite little round stone with polished mica, which I found on a walk to the Cailleach’s Shrine.

I placed a little tree knot in, I can remember that walk last autumn and this little wooden piece reminded me of an old Goddess figurine. She is wrapped with some Saoy sheep wool from a Hebridean island.

Next, I added an elongated semi-circle stone, found on a beach as my mum sat on a washed-in log looking down the river. The stone spoke to me as protection and reminded me of a famous Celtic shield found in a London river. I thought perhaps one day I’d need the stone’s protection.

I opened up my prayer beads, the circle of which I think of as the circle of life, and placed them around the inside of the bowl, with Brighid’s cross and the Cailleach’s antler resting on the doll. Everything got tucked into the bowl and I used a hat my mum wore when she had chemo as a blanket.

Everything is contained in this little silver bowl, which sits so comforting in my hands

Encompassing Prayers

Prayers are alive, they can weave their words around a person. A Caim is an encompassing prayer, much like you would wrap a shawl around yourself, or someone else.

While my mum is Catholic, I couldn’t quite be swayed to this faith, and since I can remember it’s been hills, trees, and the always-out-of-sight ones who were my guides. My mother always says I was born pagan, or rather with an animistic outlook. I could never quite understand why we went to church when there were wide open fields and great trees to gather under. The combination of perfume and incense often led to me fainting and having to be dramatically carried out of church.