F is for Family

My paternal grandmother, Constance, is dying.

She is ninety-two years old, and has outlived her husband by well over ten years. She is the last of my grandparents, and her slow passing is extremely hard on my father (whose wife just lost her own mother last week) and oddly heart-wrenching for my sister and I. Maybe it's because she's the last one, and a reminder that yup, our folks are probably next, or maybe it's simply that there never seems to be enough time to say goodbye.

I keep an ancestor altar. I can't remember when exactly I started doing so - a few years ago, but I'm not sure how many. It's grown - initially it was only two grandfathers but by the time I'd moved to my current apartment my mother's mother and her biological father had their pictures added to the display as well. Actually, that was an issue when we first moved in - where would we put the altar? Our old place had large flat-topped radiators that we would use for shrines and the like, but the current home is sleek and modern. I certainly didn't want to keep the altar in my bedroom - aside from the fact most traditions I'm familiar with don't recommend such placement, I was convinced my late grandmother at the least would be offended if she was set up in my closet. And heaven forbid I had a gentleman caller over. "Huh, oh that? Yeah, that's photos of my dead relatives. Sexy!"

I wound up installing a simple shelf in the space between the living room and kitchen. That way my mother's mother can keep an eye on any parties we have - she was pretty damn nosy while alive.

The altar has photographs, and a few personal objects that belonged to the deceased on it. There is a small bottle of white rum and rain water, and a Santa Muerte statuette that my mother brought back from the States. (I think it was from the Hoover dam - someplace that seemed fabulously unlikely, anyway.) It's colourful, and a pleasant reminder of people that we loved even if we didn't perhaps know them all that well as people and not just grandparents.

The exception is my maternal grandmother, Lillian.

We've always been closer to my mom's side of the family, if only because my mother had custody of us after her divorce. She was close to her sisters (her brother lives in Alberta, and so was rarely seen) and her mother. My mother's family was undoubtedly a matriarchy, at least as long as I've been around, and my grandmother was firmly in charge and apt to use every possible trick in the book to get her own way.

That probably sounds harsh, but it's true. She was a tough woman, and she raised her daughters to be very much like her.

My mother's side of the family are drunk Irish people, God bless them. They're also considerably weirder than my father's, in mundane ways as well as others. When I was young I was told that grandma used to read tea leaves, but she saw something that scared her and so she gave it up for good. She never did say what that something was. My one aunt has a lifelong fascination with First Nations spirituality, and the other went the complete opposite route from the rest of us for a time and became a 'prophet' and learned to cast demons out of people.

On one memorable occasion when my mother pinched a nerve in her arm quite severely, she tried to heal my mom with the power of Jay-sus. It did not work. My mother was clearly too heathen.

Oh yeah, my mom. The Worst Witch. As I've said before, she was encouraging of her daughters' interest in the occult because she herself had always had a fascination with it. She now runs a metaphysical bookshop in Chilliwack, and is one of the most accurate tarot readers I've ever seen in action. She also drives me completely batshit.

I don't usually do magic with other people. In fact, I can count on one hand the number of people I've done so with seriously since becoming an adult. My sister and mother are the two with whom I work most often and most comfortably, and the two of them share a more intuitive approach to the art than I do. They're both Scorpios - they just WILL shit into happening. But don't ask them to explain no book learning - my sister will shrug and give you the "I don't fucking know, why are you wasting my time?" look, and my mother will attempt to explain in such a way that your brain cramps.

(Voodoo has a Virgo ascendant, while my mom has Aquarius. My sister is practical as all hell as well as spooky, while my mother is just... so far out there, sometimes.)

I taught a tarot course with my mother. That was an enlightening experience that nearly resulted in my hair loss due to the huge clumps I yanked out of my skull every time my mother gave an answer that baffled/infuriated me. Questions that, to me, seemed obvious ones to ask had simply never occurred to her. "How does tarot work, Ma?" resulted in a puzzled stare and a, "it just does."

It just DOES?! My brain promptly imploded.

My mother is a witch, but she's a far cry from what I tend to think of as an average pagan. She understands natural currents, is spookily intuitive, and knows how to cast a spell. But she has almost no interest in the history of occultism, 'magical laws' or indeed any religion outside of her own personal connection with the gods. She's not big on self reflection.

My father, in stark contrast, could probably best be described as a sort of nominally-Christian, Zen sort of dude. His wife is half First Nations, half Irish Catholic, and fascinated by Judaism. They celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas. We have not ever had the, "dad, I'm a witch" conversation, because it frankly seems pointless. When I was much younger he mentioned that in Buddhism 'magic powers' were seen as a distraction from true enlightenment, but that's really all there ever was said on the subject. He bought my sister books on fairies, and he and I would discuss mythology and world religion. By this point he's either figured out witchcraft was not a phase, or has simply chosen to forget about it. This suits me fine.

...what's the point of all this ugly bullshit rambling?

You are where you came from. I'm fortunate - I love my family, and a good number of them are freaks. I can generally be myself around them and not have to worry, and I am aware of how fabulously lucky I am in that regard. Lots of people are not.

But your family is your family. Love them or loathe them, they've shaped who you are with their presence or their absence.

I'm about to lose a member of my family. That hurts like hell, but at the same time it's given me reason to pause and appreciate not only my grandmother, but everyone else connected to me by blood.

That's not a bad thing at all.