dear finn, holidays are hard without you

a letter about how much I still love from this side of the veil.

dear finn,

i feel this letter rising up inside. it has been for several days now, waiting to be written. i thought at first it might be about something else, but as always, the words had their own plan.

it turns out this one wants to be about halloween, a holiday that honors the threshold between worlds, where my love for you weaves through golden october memories, and the living and the dead dance together once more.

when moments like this arise, writing you becomes my way of reaching across the unseen, of finding you, of finding myself, of finding us.

as writers, our thoughts are like seeds carried by the wind. they land where they will, and one day sprout into new growth when they find fertile soil.

it is not our job to worry where this might be, or how many seasons they might lie dormant before the right conditions of earth, sun, and rain bring them alive again.

i guess i am lucky in a way.

since coming to substack, i have not had any shortage of ideas or questions that pour forth like a fountain from the depths of my soul. they have always been there, waiting, shimmering just under the surface of my consciousness, like dormant seeds waiting to sprout.

somehow, this platform became my magical right conditions… of code, presence, and reception… instead of earth, sun, and rain.

here, my thoughts give birth to that sacred spring that wells eternally from within. it is just my job to find the time to sit down, to let my fingers rest on the keys, and begin.

much as i did when i was sixteen and on that backpacking trip- that very first time in the high alpine meadows of colorado- after fasting for three days, when i sat down to journal, my soul emptied from the tears shed over my first love’s heartbreak. and i remember how the words came tumbling onto the page, like waves crashing onto shore. i was in awe of the power that coursed through my pen onto that little warped backpacking notebook. it was the first time i let myself flow out.

the conditions were ripe.

so here i now sit, on halloween, to write you a love letter.

i am about to take the littles out in their costumes. but i have to write this first.

oh finn, how i miss you on this holiday! it was the first one we celebrated together as a family, back then with our two young girls, whom you immediately loved as your own.

before toby and sophia were born, before we had even decided to make anything official, we dressed up that year with the timid and hopeful joy of new romance coursing through our veins, and the giggles of the girls, as we took pictures and then left to go trick-or-treating as a new, budding family of four.

our first holiday together.

and then you died, just eight short years later, just before halloween.

i remember how hard that holiday was for tobin at age six, to have you turn into a skeleton before his eyes. to bury you in the ground, and then a month later be surrounded by our culture’s obsession with ghoulish fear, with the dark and scary aspects of death. where skeletons and zombies roam the streets, and “rip” becomes some kind of sick and twisted game.

that year was rough.

somehow, i forgot to steel myself for the “year of firsts,” as they call it when you lose someone beloved.

i got through the first month of your passing and dressed up for halloween, somehow expecting the same joy i had felt for the past eight years since creating our family together.

and instead, it hit me like a ton of bricks while out for dinner at the indian restaurant where we always went before trick-or-treating. there with my mom and sister instead, (who i feel compelled to mention i don’t even talk to anymore, a story for another day) and i suddenly crumbled. i had to go to the bathroom because i didn’t want the kids to see me lose it at the table.

that was the first of what has now become the norm for holidays.

but i know that now, to always expect pain mixed with pleasure. it is to be understood that these times, when most people gather to celebrate, become days to be endured as my heart gets ripped open in new and unexpected ways every single time.

and it is never the same trigger that starts it.

so as much as i might brace for it the next year, or the next special event, it will always come out of nowhere. now i know just to expect the tenderness.

that is just a part of life now.

and it does not mean that we do not still enjoy the various holidays, because we do. the kids and i have found new traditions and ways to find enjoyment and magic.

we always do.

i know you were there with us, finn, because you played one of your recent favorite songs on the store’s loudspeakers when we arrived this year, as i took the kids into spirit halloween. i could feel you streaming in again, just like that gentle wind of change and healing blowing in from the south, just like in my last letter to you.

i have recently felt new shoots of fresh hope rising. so this halloween, i decided i was going to be happy. not in a grasping-for-the-magic kind of way, but in a new kind of softness.

for isn’t it in our very softness that we find our greatest strength?

and i am so happy to report to you that since disney’s coco came out, there has been more of a melding of the mexican way of viewing death with the day of the dead.

maybe you have even been helping from behind the scenes to shift our culture’s way of representing this holiday.

i was so grateful to be able to go shopping and come home with skeletons that have hearts and butterflies on them, our symbols for our enduring love story, that bring reverence for anyone who has departed, instead of feeding our culture’s obsession with death and destruction.

it feels as if, in this new blending of cultures, we get to rewrite how we see this holiday, by transforming it from a horror show on steroids, into something that brings the gentleness of love back to the experience of fear and death.

for death is really just a doorway to another world, and our loved ones are ever with us, when we take a moment to honor and love them from right here, where we are still living and breathing with our own broken yet thriving human hearts.

there is always still magic to be found.

this journey across worlds links us like a golden thread, which carries us to our loved ones on the wings of the mariposas.

finn, the space you held in our hearts, though ever filled with your presence from beyond the veil and the signs you inevitably send us on these special days, still calls out with longing for your physical form.

your gentle laughter, your solid warmth, your strong hands that so easily slipped into mine as we walked behind the kids, who ran excitedly from door to door.

these are the cracks in my heart that will always cry out, even as the gold of our continued love pours through from beyond the veil and flows as a river of hope.

i am reminded of the rumi poem.

someone had brought it for your altar table at your celebration of life, which we held on your birthday, november 12th, three years ago.

i loved it so much that i chose to keep it by our wedding picture in the living room:

“the minute i heard my first love story,
i started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was.
lovers don’t finally meet somewhere.
they’re in each other all along.”
— rumi

my beloved finn~ i love you today, and i will love you forever, just as i did before we ever met.

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thank you for being here, it truly means the world. i love hearing your thoughts, if you feel called to comment.

i am a writer, speaker, and musician devoted to healing and embodiment. i share essays, poetry, and original music through venus consciousness. i’d love to walk this path with you. 💞