Remetj.
That was really the only word I needed to see in my e-mail this week to suddenly be having the best week. And now, of course, I have been suffering from a severe compulsion to “READ ALL THE THINGS” on the parts of the forum that I couldn’t see before. But it’s more than that: it’s a step forward in a new world. As the high school I work at winds down from an early homecoming and gears up to start the first “real” weeks of the semester, I face the beginning of another year—one in which nothing is the same for me.
I realize that is an almost redundant statement: if we aren’t trapped in a cycle of stagnation, then things are almost never “the same” as they were in the years, days, or moments before we stopped to think on them. Yet… the timing of things this summer…
My world has changed in a fundamental way on many levels. The world of Beginner was very different than the world of Solitary Kemetic in ways I wasn’t expecting—and I know that the world of Remetj will be different still from that of Beginner. I eagerly look forward to that change, but even as I overflow with excitement for that new, shiny future which dawns in the east, I mourn the slow fading of a different light as it sinks in the west.
For a long time, I have lived in the world of Mom as Everything—in fact this summer was christened by me as the “Summer of Mom” as soon as I heard the diagnosis in April…but I only called it that until I realized that it's really more correct to say “Lifetime of Mom”. I was so close to her. I can’t say that in words that would do her justice. My world was her. My mother filled a role for me that was as dangerous as it was beautiful: Mom as All, Mom as Other Half. Which makes learning to live in the world of Mom as Ancestor especially hard…
Next Saturday is already day 70.
It doesn’t feel like it’s been that long, and yet, it feels infinitely longer. There is still a hard, sharp edge to the grief, but the wound her death caused has ceased bleeding now and it begins to pull back together as new skin grows to cover it. That doesn’t mean it hurts any less, or that there won’t be a proverbial scar left behind, just that it isn’t a danger to me anymore. The pain is now a healing one, not a rending one.
I slowly return to myself. My hands go back to beading, my mind goes back to telling stories, and my deeper self goes back to dreaming up new destinies. My gods put tasks before me and the voice whispering within me prods me along the path. I call my brother and my father often; I speak to friends daily—and my heart is beating again. I plan and scheme and go about life in general. I am whole once more. I am hale.
The ancestor shrine is ready. The words of the prayer are already starting to echo in my heart and mind, reverberating in the unseen space I’ve made for her to inhabit when she returns from her journey. I am not certain what to expect. I am not certain what she will be now. I am not certain because, for all I knew of her, I still only knew her as one of the living. She will be different. She will be changed by death. It is my firm belief that all souls are. I welcome that change even as I fear it. I will accept her in any form she takes, but there is no way to prepare for the moment when I first catch a glimpse of her transformed and transfigured self.
So much of life is about not knowing how you will react to things, but finding the courage to keep your eyes open anyway.
A few months ago, I didn’t know how I would react to the Beginner’s class. I didn’t know if I would be impressed or disappointed, satisfied or left wanting, finally connected or more alone then ever… I didn’t know if I could come to terms with the idea of the RPD or if I would be able to accept the Nisut (AUS). Would I feel anything during Senut? Could I really learn to connect with my ancestors? Would I really hear the voices of the other Netjeru if I put Set’s statue away? Could I bear to put his statue away long enough to find out? It was those uncertainties which had kept from applying for the class years before when I first heard of the temple. I only applied this summer because after six years, I had eventually realized that there was no way to know the answers but to discover them by experience.
I wrote here once, a long time ago it feels like, about trust. I have something to add to that:
I trust now.
I trust the Nisut (AUS). I trust the process and rite of RPD. I trust this community. I trust Senut. I trust my ancestors. I trust all of the Netjeru, when they speak, and I trust Set, even when he is silent. And in all of that trust, I have found what I had not dared to hope for. I am impressed, not disappointed. I am satisfied, not left wanting. I am connected, not alone. I have gained something which was not in the lessons proper but somewhere between the lines:
I am prepared even when I am unprepared. I am ready even when I am not ready. I have learned to put some trust in existence. I didn’t realize that I needed to learn that, and at first, I didn’t realize that I had learned it. Until I thought about it this week when I was buying flowers for the ancestor shrine…
Everything is in balance now. That doesn’t mean it’s perfect or even that it’s comfortable, but it does mean that it is inherently bearable. It doesn’t have to be fair that my mother was taken from me so young. It doesn’t have to make sense that the cancer came back when she had been doing so well. It simply is what it is. The important part is that this terrible thing did not go unbalanced on the scales: there have been blessings along the way to soften the blow (I cannot even fully express how much the beginner’s class, and the HoN community in general, helped in all of this—simply by existing and taking me in and giving me something to hold on to), and there were Names who stepped in to steady me when I started to fall.
Balance. Fairness. These things are not about individual events and single grains of rice, they are about sums and the weight of the crops against the need for them. The scales dip and soar as they even out, and as long as all eventually returns to the calm, steady equilibrium that makes things functional…that’s really all I can ask for.
Wow. That got overly philosophical toward the end there. I really did start this just to announce that I’m now a Remetj. I suppose that means the title of the post is now a bit misleading.
Sorry about that. XD
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