An Intimate Journey with Heron

'Her Wild Wings', 2012

It all began with Sheela-na-Gig, as many of the best things do. Before her I hadn't thought much about herons. I remember my friend Jack telling me once that he had been walking along the riverside at Richmond and had come across a crowd of people all looking up into a tree. He asked one what they were doing and they replied, “Shhhhh, there are pterodactyls nesting there!”. And that is herons; even from our perspective where birds are so completely 'other', herons are even more 'other' than that. And yet they have become trusted companions and allies on my journey through life and have moved beneath many of my most powerful experiences.

And so it is with Sheela-na-Gig who was my way into the mysterious world of the heron spirit. I remember that during my first year of priestess training I didn't think about her much. I loved her image, challenging as she does so many taboos. For those who are unfamiliar with her, Sheela-na-Gig, in Gaelic Irish Síle-na-Géige, is usually found depicted in stone carvings in churches and other buildings, particularly in Ireland and Great Britain. She has the drooping breasts of an old woman and holds open her exaggerated vulva, challenging our preconceptions about the risk of being revealed and around sexuality and age. She is often carved over doors and windows and was said to ward off evil spirits, although some have suggested that she represents female lust as 'sinful and corrupting'. Others believe that carvings of her are the remnants of a pre-Christian fertility or Goddess religion but really no one knows. Truly she is a being of the hedge, challenging our boundaries and our edges. And, for all those things, I loved her but she was always fixed, made of stone like the carvings that depict her. Just writing this I have realised that herons are a bit like that; so still that they appear like statues, and then shocking us when they suddenly move. When I felt Sheela-na-Gig move she was like a tsunami; a great wave of feeling, teaching me to breathe into and out of any pain that I was in, teaching me not to turn to stone. And heron is her bird.

The heron is a hunter of the edge places; fresh or salt, clear or muddy, edges that are neither water nor land. Like Sheela, she is a liminal-dweller, a watcher in the between places, and she guards the gateways between life and death. In Irish Gaelic her name is Síle na bPortach; portach meaning 'bog', and port a place of refuge or a haven. She is our protective wing and our place of safety in those misty in-between places that unsettle and frighten us so deeply. She is sure-footed and wild eyed, showing us the way, and she has a beak that can cut through our self-deception like a rapier. I once wrote a fragment of a poem about depression that called on heron for her ability to walk surely through the seemingly unsure places of the mind and the heart...

I know the safe way through the fen

Because I have so often fallen
Into the maddening mire of mind

that calls me on false paths home

                                                      

Now, I am heron-footed;
stepping surely on the boundary

between madness and creativity

She is my haven, my portach, my rest

('On the Sweet Track', a fragment, 2011)

                                                       

                                                

After my 'tsunami moment' with Sheela-na-Gig I saw herons a lot. My mum and dad were elderly and unwell and I was spending much time travelling to their house by train. Often I would see herons by the trackside and each time they reminded me of Sheela and prompted me to breathe and to remember that no moment, no matter how distressing, is frozen in time. I learned to let emotion move through me, rather than attaching to it and becoming subsumed; heron knows how to pick her way through those watery places of feeling and I was grateful to her.

Kathryn Price NicDhàna, in her wonderful article on 'Sheela-na-Gig and Sacred Space', notes that in Celtic mythology the heron, the crane, and the stork, are interchangeable and that the word corr is often used to describe all three. Most usually translated as crane, corr is said to be a female guardian of the Underworld and a companion of beings who bridge the space between life and death, most often old women. I was powerfully shown the truth of this when I was visiting Carmarthen in 2002 with a group of priestess sisters. I was reflecting deeply on reclaiming the dark aspect of the goddess Rhiannon at the time and had found three dead baby birds who had sadly been knocked out of their nest in the local village when the gutters were cleaned. They had been left on the pavement and, as small birds are companions of Rhiannon, I saw this finding as a message about her connection to death, rather than just being the Love Goddess that she is often portrayed as. I decided to gather up the dead babies and take them to the river where I released them into the quickly running water as a blessing on their journey. The next day we visited Rhiannon's waterfall and I found a stone with markings that looked like a heron's foot, reminding me that I was working with the goddess's death aspect. That day, the children found a dead mouse and, having been inspired by my story of the baby birds, made a 'shroud' for it from a large green leaf tied up with grass and launched it from the top of the waterfall as a sort of 'burial at sea'! I'm not sure why we so often think that children have a problem with death...

In 2004, my dad suffered a stroke and began a slow journey of recovery during which it seemed to me that he inhabited a shadow world between living and dying. He had always been a sensitive man and often heard voices in the hospital telling him jokes, which seemed to keep his spirits up. Eventually, he was moved to a rehabilitation unit and one day I was sitting on the side of his bed when he said, “Oh, you've turned into a heron!” By then I had been working as a priestess in the liminal spaces for some years and found his vision deeply affirming. From that time I began to more consciously walk the heron path.

But heron comes to show the way

through misty marshes of the mind

The edge of love, the edge of fear

The connection we were born to find

And when Crone Mother finally calls you
to rest and change in dreaming womb
I will rejoice that you are with Her

But always feel you left too soon

             I call to you my joy, my father

             as priestess, to the Blessed Isle

            As daughter call you ever homeward
             to stay with me for just a while

(From 'Northern Star: for my father', 2004)

In the winter of 2010 I was renting a small house in Glastonbury, Somerset. It was a time when my creativity felt as dry as dead leaves but I enjoyed the little house just on the edge of the Somerset marshes and loved hearing owls calling at night. One day, feeling particularly stuck, I went for a long walk and was amazed to see a huge bird flying towards me. At first I couldn't work out what it was but then saw that it was a heron. Seeing its wide powerful wings something unlocked inside me and, having never really drawn before, I began to draw and paint herons; something that I love to do and, in reality, the only thing that I have ever been able to draw! Somehow herons are just in my blood.

'Heron's Winter Dreaming', 2010

'Heron Guards the Gateway', 2011

'Heron Sleeps with Standing Stones', 2011

In 2011, I met Will and began living part time on his boat in which we travelled the Kennet and Avon Canal and River Thames. My story with Will is one for another day but it was a time when I was able to more deeply connect with herons in their natural environment. We would see them every day; sometimes hunting in the shallows, sometimes flying on their wide ungainly wings; always hauntingly, perfectly 'other'. Although I loved Will and the boat, it was a period of bone-crushing despair; journeying both with the challenges of life on the water, which was hard but beautiful, and with his debilitating mental illness, which was a trap for us both. Clinging to every glimpse of her storm-winged beauty, heron taught me the power of patience and of knowing just the right moment to strike for quicksilver morsels of happiness amidst the grinding heartache of trying to get Will some care in a world that seemed to have lost its compassion. Each time I went to the boat I would put on a heron pendant as a symbol that I was stepping into my 'water gypsy' self and, often, I would find heron feathers on the riverbank. When I finally found the courage to fly myself free I threw my pendant into the deepest water I could find, needing to sever my attachment to the river and its heron dreaming, and offered a heron feather and some woad-dyed wool to our fire until they were ashes. Heron knows about letting go.

'Heron Offering', 2013

'Woad-dyed Wool for the Ancestors', 2013

I asked heron to show me how to hunt my freedom and she answered but she is never easy and it remained a path that needed careful negotiation and sure-footedness through many mires. There were many tears; hers is the path of deep emotion. In 2014 Will died suddenly and I was privileged to help midwife his beautiful soul into the Otherworld; another story for another day, but a reminder that heron, guardian of the Underworld, continued to work her strange magic in my life. Somehow, she was part of the enchantment that drew us together and she was part of the enchantment that set us both free; like the Crone whose energy she carries, she asks a lot of us. Will once told me that he had never really noticed the herons before I was there; that I made the river beautiful for him.

He left just as the snowdrops came

He could not hope to hope again;
Could not bear to let 
the fragile spears break through
his frozen faith, for life to rise,
a spark to catch,
and then to let him fall
and fall again,
as winter turned to spring
He felt unseen,
yet heron saw him fly away,
kingfisher caught his soul
and made it fire, set him free
and silver salmon mother swam him home...

(For Will, 2014)

There are times when heron has appeared when I was least expecting her. Once when I had an opportunity to do some smithcraft and she appeared from the fires in the bracelet that I was making; perhaps the heron feather that I had offered to the fire on the riverbank was emerging from the flames...

'Heron Forge', 2013

...and once in 2012 when I made my own drum. As part of the making we used our hands to cover the drum hoop with red ochre, so often a symbol of life in death and a substance which I had used to mark both my mum's and dad's bodies before their burials. Having painted the hoops, we stretched the deer skins we had chosen across the frame and, somehow, my drum skin became marked with red ochre. The marks looked to me like an old, old woman, both in profile and looking straight at me and, for some reason, I thought of heron. 

'Heron Grandmother Drum', 2012

That night, lying in the yurt, I had a dream that an ancient ancestor, a grandmother of the Heron Tribe, beautiful with deeply wrinkled skin, storm-grey eyes, and hair falling in long grey plaits, came and looked me straight in the face. It felt like love and a challenge and even now when I close my eyes I can see her. She is my teacher and yet, like heron, she often disappears into the river mist. And she is always silent. When Will died and we walked in procession after his coffin I knew that the Heron Tribe were with me; they are the death-walkers and they know about Life.

'Storm-wing Heron', 2012

And finally for now, in December 2014, my drum-making sisters and I all had sacred tattoos carved on our skin. Some had chosen their designs before we met for a weekend of deep journeying together but I decided to wait for inspiration. The symbol that came was an antlered heron foot, which has deep meaning for me and continues my journey both with the heron spirit and with She~Who~Is. These are just fragments of a story that moves through my life, through every breath, and deep beneath my skin. For now, I will say that I remain sure-footed in walking the heron path. I will trust her to show me where to put my feet. I am grateful.

'With Grandmother Heron Drum', 2012

'Antlered Heron tattoo', 2014

Three poems for Calan Gaeaf...

Northern Star (for my father)

Your journey is not mine to choose,

manipulate, to change or bend.

Life’s spiral path must have its way

Its aim unclear until the end

You drifted deep inside your mind

A second and the veil reached out

I stand upon the distant shore

My call a futile, wordless shout

    I call to you my joy, my father,

    as priestess, to the Blessed Isle

    As daughter, call you ever homeward

     to stay with me for just a while

My soul shrinks to a grain of sand

To see your hard-fought words unborn

And yet your smile, my northern star,

Would bring the honey to the dawn

     I call to you my joy, my father,

     as priestess, to the Blessed Isle

     As daughter, call you ever homeward

     to stay with me for just a while

Words lost in too many words

The meanings far from tongue or ear

But I will listen in my dreams

   and in my heart your words I’ll hear

For you have walked the bitter edge where

     fear and love entwine in wild embrace

And you have kissed Her blood red mouth

     and gazed upon Her stone deep face

     I call to you my joy, my father,

     as priestess, to the Blessed Isle

     As daughter, call you ever homeward

     to stay with me for just a while

A deep-root oak, your spirit stands

Around we spin in praying dance

To pull you back from dark confusion

To sing you home from endless trance

Will you surface from Her cauldron

   lost and caged or changed and healed?

Will life’s choices branch before you

Or has Her kiss your future sealed?

     I call to you my joy, my father,

     as priestess, to the Blessed Isle

     As daughter, call you ever homeward

      to stay with me for just a while

But heron comes to show the way

   through misty marshes of the mind

The edge of love, the edge of fear

The connection we were born to find

And when Crone Mother finally calls you

    to rest and change in dreaming womb

I will rejoice that you are with Her

But always feel you left too soon

     I call to you my joy, my father

     as priestess, to the Blessed Isle

     As daughter call you ever homeward

     to stay with me for just a while

               

Your journey is not mine to choose,

manipulate, to  hange or bend.

But it is my joy to walk with you,

my father-child, your daughter-friend

 (2004)

Grief Like Horses (for dad)

Cold autumn pavements carry mourning,

  

   your whispered voice drifts on the breeze,

but I can’t catch the words you send me,

  

   like dying leaves lost to the trees.

I stand like stone on this cold pavement,

    

   paralysed by all I feel,

but Dark Rhiannon surges past me;

   Her dark-eyed challenge tinged with steel.

For I have been scarred by your passing,

   

   your story carved into my skin.

Such beauty in the depths of leaving.

   Such fear to let these feelings in.

I dread these waves that tower above me,

    

   am threatened by the undertow,

but know that I cannot outrun them

   

   and in their tides my healing sow.

This grief like horses drags me onward,

  

   when I would rest and dream you whole.

For I would die to journey with you,

  

   but grief’s wild currents claim my soul.

And, if I dare, I will ride with them;

  

   allow this pain to wash me wild.

Or I could stay on this cold pavement;

  

  deny the woman, stay the child.

So you will journey with your dying

  

  and I will journey with my grief.

But we will touch on this cold pavement;

   love whispered in an autumn leaf.

(2008)

I am my father 

Walking his Woman spirit

Soul to soul entwined

(2013)

All poems ©Jacqueline Woodward-Smith

Death and Other Love Songs: On Midwifing the Death of My Father

This essay was first published in Goddess Pages: a magazine of Goddess Spirituality in the 21st Century in the Winter 2007 edition

In memory of Ronald Henry Smith, 14th September 1929 to 17th August 2007 and for ‘She who births us, and waits for us at the end of a life, to take us to another shore’1

And when life can no longer hold you let the red and white springs sing you home …2

I thought long and hard about whether to write this article; death is such an intimate, personal thing that I thought perhaps it would be a betrayal of my father, who I loved more dearly than I can ever say. And yet, when I think about the days and months before his death, about the honesty, openness, dignity, and humour with which he approached his final moment I know that he would say that it was ok. That if it helped others to be less afraid then his death should be shared. Ultimately, his final journey was his alone, and I can only relate my experience of it, so perhaps there can be no betrayal after all. The secrets of that journey have gone with him and I can only share what I know. From my own perspective I do know that death should not be hidden, as is so encouraged in our society, and that the strongest memory I have of those last hours, and the days following it, are of the savage beauty and fierce love to be found at the heart of the Crone.

My dad, Ron, was diagnosed with prostate cancer following a stroke in 2004. I don’t think that I had ever realised what a strong and determined man he was until I saw him fight his way back to health after the stroke but that was also the first time that I ever saw him cry and perhaps the first time that I really saw him as a human being and not just ‘dad’. In a way, I think that there are few things that have shocked me more than seeing my father cry but, through his recovery, we did develop a stronger and more honest connection, for which I am ever grateful. During that time he had many strange visions and in one he saw me shape-shift into a heron, which made him laugh, but made me think of the bird that guards the liminal spaces between life and death. It was then that I first began to consider the role that I might, as best as I was able, play in midwifing his death when the time came.

                                                              'Heron Guards the Gateway', Jacqueline Woodward-Smith, 2011.

I saw him battle that stroke and win and he approached cancer in the same way; with dignity and a determination to be well. He was a fierce protector of his family and he would have considered it a betrayal of us to give in, no matter what the personal cost to himself. In the years to come I often wished that it were otherwise and that he would let go, but that was not his way. As time went on and I saw his health failing I, feeling the brush of the heron’s wing, found the courage to talk to him about death and what we both thought it would be like. He became more and more open to talking in a way that he never had, about the past and memories of his own parents and siblings, about his dreams and disappointments, and about how proud he was of my brother and I and I told him that I loved him many times (which was something that we had never really said). During this time my brother began to research our family tree and dad cried when he saw the names of all the relatives that he had never known but hoped that he would meet some of them when he died. He was also disappointed that no serial killers or highwaymen had revealed themselves! Over time I saw the masks that he wore melt away like autumn leaves and I saw the kind, funny, strong, wounded, and gentle man beneath. It was an honour to share that time with him.

Eventually, in July 2007, he was admitted to hospital with acute kidney failure and, although his kidneys improved, he was told that, as the cancer had by then spread to his bones and lymphatic system, there was nothing more that could be done for him. He received this news with courage and good humour (as he put it he had “both feet in the last chance saloon and Marlene Dietrich was singing ‘Boys in the Backroom’”!), and I think a degree of relief because the responsibility he felt to carry on fighting had been removed. He then went about giving us his final messages (mainly about looking after one another and telling us how proud he was of us) and preparing for death.

A week before he died I attended the Glastonbury Goddess Conference in honour of the Crone. It seemed so perfect to me that we would be journeying with the Crone this year and I learned much about Her nature, and my own, in that week. I had felt for months that our family was being held in a liminal space waiting for death and, through my own intuition and talking to others, found that to be very like the time of waiting for a birth. Both death and birth are transitions into another state of being and it was as though all my attention became focussed on that one thing. When I left for the Conference and said goodbye to dad in the hospital I thought that I might never see him again but I knew that we had said all that needed to be said (despite that fact that I would rather have been able to say those things to him over and over again until the end of time). At the opening ceremony I read out ‘Northern Star’, the poem that I had written for him at the time of his stroke and, by phone, asked the nurses caring for him to tell him that many people had cried. He was a man who never felt ‘seen’ and I wanted him to know that he was seen and mattered before he left.

Often as a priestess during the conference I found myself holding the energy around the doors in ceremony and reflected on my role as gatekeeper for him as he came closer to death. I felt unprepared for the task but hoped that my priestess training and some of the energy of the conference would stay with me and get me through what needed to be done. In the end though I think that it is love that helps us through; there really is nothing more that we need. Before I left the Conference I attended a ceremony where priestesses embodied the Goddesses of the Wheel of Brigit-Ana and gave oracles. I went to Cerridwen and asked Her to give my father a gentle death. Her reply has stayed with me; “he will have his own death with its own dignity” and those words seemed to free me from feeling that I was responsible for making it ‘alright’ and allowed me to let go of expectation and react to what was happening around me, rather than constantly worrying about what it ‘should be like’.

After the Conference I went straight to see dad and we talked about my experiences and his poem being read; he told me again that he was proud of me. It was a warm and lovely afternoon and, looking back, it was the last time that we shared that connection before he began to let go and journey into death. The next few times that I saw him were more difficult, as he was becoming irritated with life in hospital and frustrated that he was no longer able to help with some difficult issues that were happening in our family. He began to close down, becoming angry and uncommunicative and looking frailer by the day. I was saddened by, what seemed to be, the loss of the warm connection that we had found but reminded myself that it was his journey and that my role was as a witness. I had always felt that he would struggle to die, that he would find it hard to let go when the time came, so perhaps that ‘winding in of the threads of connection’ was exactly what was needed at the time. Whatever the reason I trusted the wisdom of his dying.

As a final gift I took a plastic box, which I labelled ‘Ron’s Box of Love’, into the hospital with some pens and paper and asked everyone to put their ‘love’ into it. On my last few visits I, with dad more often asleep than not, spent my time writing thoughts and memories on slips of paper and placing them in the box. My niece and nephew also placed things inside, as did my brother and even one of the nurses caring for dad. It felt important to spend the time expressing our gratitude for all the things he had given us, even though he was perhaps unaware of us doing so (after he had died his nurse told me that she had read some of the notes out to him and that he had smiled). One night in bed, after a particularly difficult visit, I pulled my ‘crow cloak’, which I wear to work with the energy of the Nine Morgens, over me and I heard their voices. They told me that the Death Mother was circling but that the time was not right for Her to descend. Instead they said that dad was “with the earth one”, learning about the experience of being in a failing body and how to let go of it. I also saw a vision of beautiful autumn leaves decaying back into the earth and felt comforted. The Morgens helped me to see that dad’s journey was unfolding as it should and I began to see the gifts that even something as seemingly terrible as cancer can hold in allowing us to fully experience letting go, if we have the courage to do so. I reflected on the added pain and fear that might come from a sudden and unexpected death and felt grateful that my dad had been able to, as much as possible, experience a gentle end to his life.

In the following days I returned to work but also made another short trip to Glastonbury, where I collected water from the red and white springs and communed with the landscape to gain further strength for the days to come. The morning after my Glastonbury trip I packed my bag for work as usual but also felt that I should pack the sacred spring water and some other items from my altar to Cerridwen (which I had created on my return from the conference). I had only been in my office for a few hours when I received a phone call to say that I should come to the hospital; dad had developed a chest infection and he, and those caring for him, had made the decision not to treat it. It took me two hours to get to the hospital and, by the time I got there, he was virtually unconscious, probably because of the drugs that he was being given. My mother was there, later my brother came, and we all sat together, not saying much but glad to have one another. Eventually mum needed to sleep and my brother took her home before he had to return to his own family. He said that he would return in the morning and so dad and I were left alone.

It is almost impossible to describe that night, although I still remember every moment. Dad had been moved into a side room that morning and so we were more or less left alone, the nurses only coming in a few times to check his drip. As soon as mum and my brother were gone I set up a simple altar on a side table. I felt right to create a sense of sacred, despite being in the hospital. If we had been at home I may have been more creative (lighting candles etc) but perhaps that simple collection of objects was all that dad would have wanted; he was a man who appreciated simplicity. I called to the Death Mother, Cerridwen, asked Her to be with us and sat wondering what to do then. I held his hand and told him that I loved him, that he had done all that he needed to do and had kept us safe, that he was brave and that I was proud of him, and I told him that when the time was right he could let go, that he would know what to do. I know that he heard me because I felt him squeeze my hand and a tear rolled from his eye. I repeated the same things several times during the night and also told him all the things that I had been too scared to say, knowing that this would be our last chance in this lifetime. Often I sang to him quietly but most of the time it felt right that my only role should be as a fully present witness. I wanted him to know that I was there but didn’t want to interfere.

What I learned was that death is hard work and is something that we do, not something that is done to us. The Death Mother is our partner in the dance of death and we do have our role to play. Dad was busy that night and was constantly moving his hands. I didn’t hold his hand for much of the time because it felt important that he should be able to move as he needed to. He appeared to be making something and mumbled that he had to go to work, a place perhaps where he had been most himself and had felt most creative and appreciated. He had been a toolmaker and a few days later I mentioned some of the movements that he had been making to an ex-colleague and she gasped and said that they were the movements that he would have made at one of his machines! A few times he appeared to take some food and ate it, at one point seemingly picking some fruit from a tree. I was reminded of Leslene della-Madre’s account of her mother’s death; that her mother had burrowed into the pillow as though searching for the breast.3 It seems that there is something that sustains us even in our dying and it was quite beautiful to watch. Dad worked, and I witnessed, for many more hours; he was sometimes peaceful, sometimes busy, and sometimes set his jaw with the determined expression of a small boy. I cried many times but I smiled many times too. He only opened his eyes once more and looked at me sadly, not as father to daughter but as friend to friend. I felt that that was when we truly said goodbye and I smiled at him for one last time.

Several hours later, when his breathing had remained the same, I began to think that he would live for another day and eventually slept for a few hours. When I woke his breathing was slightly shallower but still strong and I sat singing to him softly for several more hours. He continued to work with his hands and appeared to be having a discussion with someone, his face showing questioning or approval of what was being said. I began to sense that he might have become ‘stuck’ somehow; he was a strong man who had fought all his life to do the right thing and to protect his family and, although he had accepted death, it seemed that some part of him was not ready to go. It felt right to call all the goddesses of the Wheel of Brigit-Ana, which I work with as a Priestess of Avalon, into the room. I called the Mothers of Air, Fire, Water, and Earth and Maiden, Lover, Mother, and Crone, with Brigit-Ana in the centre. I asked each of them to bring their individual gifts to dad’s last moments and to help him let go when the time was right. I told them that he was a child of their soil, that his feet had walked their sacred land all his life, and asked them that they care for him and show him the way one last time. Finally I called to our ancestors and particularly to his mother, Annie, who he had spoken of so often in his final months. I asked her to come to him and take his hand. I told him again that he was brave, that he would know what to do when the moment came to let go, and that all our love would go with him to be joined with the love of our ancestors in the Otherworld; from love into love. I began to sing but, even as I began, he gave three breaths and died. The room was completely still and I felt a deeper peace than any I had ever experienced before. It was as though there was a presence of a great and luminous darkness that was both light and dark all at the same time. I believe that, at the end, the Goddess, who is Mother of us all, and his ancestors came to show him the way. There are things that I would have wanted to be different; he had wanted to die at home, perhaps there was too much sedation, perhaps there was more that we needed to say to one another, perhaps I could have been better/different/more but these are just questions and don’t matter now. All that matters is that his was a good enough death; Ronald Henry Smith died bravely and well and I was, and am, proud to be his daughter.

I sat with dad for another hour before I called the nurses and the great feeling of peace remained with us. I felt privileged to have been allowed to witness the death of another human being. Sometimes I also felt angry; if the Goddess could have taken him so easily why couldn’t She have let him stay? But I knew that all was exactly as it should have been and that She had come with love and compassion and taken him back to Her womb, which is ever changing and ever the same.

When the nurses eventually came I asked whether I could help them wash his body and was able to bless him with water from the red and white springs before he was wrapped in a shroud and taken away from me. My brother came and we went home to tell mum; life took over once more and I was deeply comforted by the feeling of family togetherness that we had for those few days. Eventually dad’s body was brought to the funeral home and I again requested to wash his body. I had expected them to say no but they seemed pleased and gave me everything that I needed. I was left alone with him and was able to bathe him and rub peppermint oil into his body. I also washed, dried, and combed, his hair, which felt like such a deep and tender act of love that it makes me cry just to think of it. When he was placed in the woven willow coffin that he had requested I was able to visit several times to sit with him and fill the coffin with fresh herbs, my mother offered a yellow rose, my brother photos of his children. Just before the lid was sealed for his funeral I marked dad’s brow with red ochre and wished him a gentle journey in the Cauldron of the Goddess. His coffin was decorated with daisy flowers and greenery, as though we had gone out into a meadow and collected them that morning. Rosemary was woven into them for remembrance. Someone who saw his coffin said that it reminded her of a Moses basket.

After the funeral I, and several of my dear friends and fellow priestesses, watched his coffin being committed, as he had requested, to the flames and the creative and transformative fires of the Goddess, and loudly sang ‘We all come from the Goddess’. It all felt very ancient, very right, and somehow comforting, and I like to think that dad would have been pleased (and probably highly amused).

I never believed that I could sit with someone in their dying, that I could wash their body after death, that I could stand and watch them taken by the fires, but I found that I could and I will be forever grateful to my father for allowing me to learn so much about both life and death. I wasn’t able to do this because I am a priestess but because I loved him and because I know that none of us can ever be whole until our lives, and within that our deaths, are touched by the Sacred Feminine, who has been so long denied.

I was ‘high’ for several weeks after dad died; as though the stardust that clings to those who have just given birth was also clinging to me, but now I journey with grief and mourning and sit in the cave of the Morgen Crows as they tattoo the story I shared with my father into my skin; I won’t pretend that it doesn’t hurt. I don’t know how long I will stay with them but I do know that everything has changed and that I, like my father, have been through an initiation whose effect is not yet clear. There is much pain and fear in dying, there is much sorrow, but, if we can learn to see through that fear, if we can question all that we have been taught, if we can sit with the Goddess in our dying, then something deep and wounded will be healed; just wait for the brush of the heron’s wing.

                                                               'Heron's Winter Dreaming', Jacqueline Woodward-Smith, 2010.

 ©Jacqueline Woodward-Smith, Calan Gaeaf 2007

1. Leslene della-Madre, Midwifing Death: Returning to the Arms of the Ancient Mother (Plain View Press, 2003) p.59.
2. Jacqueline Woodward-Smith, unfinished poem
3. As 1. p.56.