I am content here, lost in a burning sea.

Some slow thoughts on loss, dreams and Saturn in Pisces.

It’s been a month since our little man Lucas, my Nooshy, passed away. He would have been five weeks old. 

There are three jars of plantain leaves extracted into oil in the cupboard. Yesterday was the day that I was meant to formulate them into a nappy rash cream, but today they sit patiently, knowing even they cannot heal the wounded heart. 

It was a quiet morning. The trees outside look as though they are lightening, shedding crispy golden leaves, the kind I wanted to watch him stomp around in. 

It looked sunny and warm out there (at least it did before I took the photo), but the thin film of condensation on the window told me otherwise. All this glimpsed through parted curtains, and a half-arsed artificial cobweb hangs from some bunting draped across the sill - a sad attempt to signal some Halloween spirit.

I will open those curtains. I will let the light in.

I have thirteen unopened What’s Apps and seven text messages awaiting a response. Oh crap, I still have to go through the cards and make sure to send thanks to all those kind people.

But not yet, maybe not even today.

I have six drafts sitting in my Substack dashboard, all making incremental moves away from grief writing, and every day another idea takes root in my consciousness demanding a quick harvest. 

Quality over quantity, I tell myself. Take your time.

I have so much time now, and still, the parts of myself that I most detest, the procrastinating parts that blamed “busyness”, are up to their old antics.

But I am busy - busy keeping myself busy, busy creating and busy distracting myself from pregnancy nostalgia, or the primal urge to get pregnant again when my body and soul still need recovery. 

I’m busy pondering. I’m busy finding grooves in the bedrock that can channel these tumultuous rapids towards a placid lake.

I visited this lake in my dreams, clinging to an altitudinous ladder amidst the clouds, that lean rectangular steel we climbed as kids after jumping off the pier in the harbour. Everyone else was confidently rushing down this ladder, but I was trembling and hesitant. 

Photo by Lily Banse on Unsplash

When I eventually plucked up the courage to jump in, I opened my eyes beneath the surface. Green, murky, swampy. Vague shapes taking on forms - I didn’t want to be in this shallow Amazonian quagmire that looked like a deep, clear lake from so high above. So many threatening and unseen creatures lurk within.

I’m not an expert in dream interpretation, but it is fairly commonly accepted that bodies of water signify the unconscious depths of the psyche. The murkiness suggests fear of the unknown, anxiety, lack of clarity, loss, and overwhelm - yes, these all seem applicable. 

One might extrapolate from this and think (rightly) that I have some serious lurkers to be dealt with. At least I ventured into the waters this time. 

A couple of weeks ago I watched the ocean burn from the beach, the sea completely engulfed. Waves and flames were one rolling torrent after another. An assortment of whales washed up on the sands of the harbour, scorched and suffering. 

(Incidentally, this was around the time fiery Mars regained residency in Scorpio)

https://hdqwalls.com/ocean-is-on-fire-wallpaper

If whales signify messengers from the depths, then these oceanic oracles are more the sacrificial sirens. 

Naturally, this dream appears to be signalling some major transformation in my psyche, which is an understatement after having lost a child. One online interpretation described having been “hit hard with some painful truth or shocking experience”. 

The other tidbit of dream interpretation lore I have stored is that the dream symbols are not necessarily universal (I know this contradicts what I said about water - but this has been validated for many through dream experiences).

We all have the ability to interpret our own dreams because they originated from our own psychic substance, and we alone know the preformed symbolic associations we have with an image. 

We all love the mysterious qualities of whales, with their mournful songs. I read once that they are the keepers of the Akashic records, the metaphysical transcripts that govern daily affairs.

This being the symbolic association that always springs to mind for me, I wonder then if these burning whales signify for me the karmic confusion every parent probably suffers having lost a child, “what did I do to deserve this?”

My records have been burned. Are the books balanced now?

What kind of karmic injustice incurred such a heavy debt, one of Biblical proportions? 

I can’t help but wonder if there is some sort of firstborn son karma in the family, as was tenderly suggested to me by a friend. My Grandfather, who was a lovely man but a very tortured soul, witnessed his firstborn son pass before him, my Mother’s only brother. 

I remember his spiritual crisis, this test of his faith. I was only eleven, and I witnessed his transformation from the gregarious and playful hero to the demoralised and bedevilled old man. He literally gave up on life and began to visibly age after the death of his son.

I have no intention of giving up just yet. In fact, my eagerness to return to living instils a deep sense of guilt - anyone who has experienced such a loss describes it to me. They know it too. 

When I sat down to write this, I didn’t think it would end up as an exploration of dreams, symbols or water, nevermind astrology (I didn’t think I would publish this either) but the meandering flow of my thoughts brought me to look at my Grandad’s chart for the first time in a long time. 

I never noticed how similar some of his planetary placements were to my little Nooshy’s. Mars in Libra, Capricorn Moon, and Saturn in Pisces. My Mother repeatedly recalls with fascination how such a tiny baby had the form and heft of a gorilla - how he was “the cut of your Grandfather”.

www.behance.net/gallery/9092819/Zodiac-Signs-Illustrations

Saturn in Pisces, that transit I dreaded - for good reason in hindsight. Saturn, Lord of Darkness and Death, took my Sunshine, my literal Son. 

Two of the most important men in my life lived and embodied the most difficult transit I have experienced. One for only six days and the other for nearly eighty-six years. 

No wonder I partnered with a Pisces Sun, that relational heaviness upon my soul needs to be appropriately balanced with a dose of dreamy whimsy (which my partner administers in generous quantities). 

So here I sit pondering the meaning of Saturn in Pisces. 

Pisces is conceptualised as a vast and mysterious ocean. Its symbol is that of the two fish - one swimming downwards, towards pessimism, the other upwards, towards optimism. The grief cycle, and a defining characteristic of the Piscean temperament. 

Saturn is also a dualistic deity, sometimes associated with Janus the two-faced God, guardian of ceremonial gateways, the liminal spaces, like birth and death. 

This topic deserves a more dedicated exploration in another essay, one I have half-written on the back of this brief exploration of our family karma. 

But today is a slow day, so I’ll set that aside for now. 

In Irish culture, today is usually the day of the month’s mind, where we attend a mass in church to mark the month since the passing. Is it a coincidence that his coincides with Samhain, the thinning of the veil between this world and the next?

I miss my most beautiful creation with all my heart, but he is now my muse. Never have I been so creatively productive. Never have so many words traced a page, nor have I played with being so candid, laid bare. Line after line.

Lucas’ death opened me up to a new inner world, the one beyond the Mourning Mountains of Nana, and the Fretted Fields of Grandfather. Indeed, any sort of grief always has this effect, it’s one of its mitigating qualities. 

Nooshy will guide me back to the real world when it is timely, but for now, he is the lighthouse, and I am content here, playing with the shadows cast, lost in a burning sea.

https://afremov.com/sunset-by-the-lighthouse.html