death thoughts on a new moon in virgo

the night i was born, there was a new moon in virgo above me. the same moon phase and constellation it is visiting tonight.

i don’t know whether it’s me or the moon’s pull that has me awake past 1am, but here we are. lately, it’s not birth (or rebirth) that consumes me. it’s death and dying. it’s last breath and goodbye forever. absolute endings where the love is stuck and unsure of how to transform itself. it’s a feeling that there are too many endings for those among us with the courage to be both - our queerness and our darkness. 

being born during a new moon means i have to find my own way forward through the dark. and it seems that life up until now has been about reconciling my relationship with the dark. not the fearful white supremacist lens through which we are taught about the dark, or really, blackness. darkness meaning infinite possibilities. darkness meaning wonder and what you can't plan for. i imagine the black starlit sky being the wide space that's holding me, as well as what i can't even imagine is coming towards me.

i wonder if someone's last breath was my first, 27 years ago at durham regional hospital. returning home to durham, i am spending time with my dad during his last chapter of life. when he is overwhelmed by his painful aging process, he prays for death. he calls for his ma - my grandmother, now ancestor - and asks her to take him. sitting near him in the kitchen of my childhood home, watching him perform this one-man ceremony for the afterlife, i wonder how it feels to be ready to say goodbye to this one. how does the spirit prepare to meet it's next moon, it's new breath?

being the child of someone ready to die doesn't really make you feel like a child anymore. in a lot of ways, i feel like i am rearranging who i am to my family. not a parent, no longer a child, but a free form being who is also being pulled into another phase of life. in durham, the sunlight on the green spaces has an other worldly glimmer. it's too beautiful, but in a way that feels like it's that light people say they see before they die. i suppose home can be that to me.

i am listening to a lot of drake recently. repeatedly. maybe because he is a scorpio, the sign who teaches us the meaning of death and rebirth. moving through my day to day, i walk with death near me - a certain clarity that brings discomfort to denial. i enjoy meeting new people here, but small talk won't do. i am digging for the root and feeling for the edge of experience. maybe being with someone in transition will do that to you. teach you how to be on purpose with your time. 

studying astrology is giving me life and grounding through this transition. virgo, the sign of my moon, is rigorous in its practice of digesting, processing, and clearing. it likes to work. my moon is in my 7th house of committed partnerships. this feels spot on, because i truly enjoy commitment and working to sustain it. i love relationships and how we do them. but how can i fulfill my life purpose through being in one? the commitment ceremony i need the most is between me and my realest truths.

i have found a few good outlets for my desire to work hard. i am rigorously training my dog, karuna, to heel. i am purging my parents' house of piles of paper and other excess accumulated over 22 years. and now, i am recommiting to a practice of writing. not because it will be perfect (note to self) but because it's worth doing the hard work of uncovering and communicating life and our relationship to it. it's worth telling the story of how we transformed an ending, even death, into it's next breath.