Thread by @ai_valentin

The shadows are drawing in, darklings, and the nights are filling with ice and frost.

But we've got some cards to read, so pull up a chair for #TarotTonight.

Tonight's card is from Les Vampires Oracle, and deals pretty bluntly with death. If you can't handle that, please mute the thread. I know this hits home for some folks who don't need extra stuff to deal with.

Got it? Good. On to "Death Rites."

Now, this isn't a "death card," as in, you draw it and you're literally facing down death in the near future.

But it is a card that says it's time to think about death -- about your own, about those who have died that you love, and how to deal with loss in general.

So let's break this one down into a couple of pieces.

For one, the dreaded Holiday Season is here. For a lot of people, that includes a profound loneliness because of missing friends, family, and loved ones. Remember them. Please.

It's not macabre to remember the dead and those who survive them at joyful times. It's the opposite. Life is all the more precious when we remember that it will end and so the business of living cannot be put off.

Take the time to reach out amidst the lights and festivities to people who are dealing with loss and grief that you know. Be kind. Be compassionate. Give them the gift of being remembered and being heard.

In modern western culture, we don't have a lot of built-in mechanics that result in people visiting the grieving, or even identifying someone who is mourning a loss. We're a death-adverse culture. And that's to our detriment.

As long as we can ignore the mourner and the grave, we don't have to face our own mortality, or the mortality of those we care about. We can ignore it.

But death is not easily ignored. It doesn't stay away because you won't look it in the eye.

Which brings us to the next element: what losses are you avoiding right now? What griefs are you holding at arm's length? Who are you missing that you feel like you can't acknowledge?

It's okay to feel grief. It's okay to miss someone who has died, even if they died years ago. There is no time limit on missing someone.

(That being said, if a year has passed and you're still feeling intense grief and depression without any signs of it easing, please get some grief counselling. It's helpful, and moving on doesn't mean forgetting. It just means living.)

Especially at the holidays as we pull out treasured mementos and engage in traditions, we often feel our loved one's absences. Let yourself feel that. Don't bundle it away because no-one wants to be sad on a holiday.

Grief repressed is grief that collects, bottles up, and explodes when you can least afford to deal with it. It's far better to acknowledge it, to be present in that feeling of loss, and experience it rather than shut it away.

Whether a loss is fresh and raw or old and aching, experience the pain. Be present in the pain. Acknowledge your dead. Talk to them. Recognise what they meant to you.

Conversely, if the dead person is someone who hurt you, acknowledge that pain. Don't feel pressured to keep your story and your emotions silent because it's "rude to speak ill of the dead."

It's worse to stay silent about harm. You own your voice, your feelings, and your story.

Let yourself feel. Let yourself think about death. Don't hide from it. Experience it. Because the more you experience it and deal with it, the more prepared you will be when it comes around again.

Lastly, take this card in the waning weeks of the year as a reminder that you, too, are mortal (unless you're an actual vampire reading this). You will die. You have to make peace with that reality and actually think about it.

Have you thought about what you want to happen with your body? What will happen with your things? Your intellectual property like books, artwork, music, etc?

Start thinking about this stuff. Start writing down your wishes.

If something happened tomorrow, would people know what you wanted? Or would everyone be left scrambling and end up with whatever the funeral directors tell your family?

Give a gift to your loved ones. Leave instructions for your death.

If nothing else, have a conversation with a friend of loved one about who will erase your browser history, who gets your best stuff, and if you want to be cremated or buried or dropped off the side of a ship.

Remember that you, too, will leave a legacy. You are planting seeds in a garden you will never get to see. What seeds are they? What do you want to leave behind to burn brightly as your memory?

Start planting that garden. Start planting the trees. Tend to it now.

None of this is easy. Like I said, Western culture is death-averse. We ignore it. We don't talk about it unless it's gruesome murders on television or statistics in schools. But that bites us in the ass when our time comes, or a loved one's time comes.

Talk to your loved ones, especially people to whom you're really close. Know if your parents have made you the executor of their wills, for example. If you have the funds, write a will yourself. If not, know how your state handles estates without wills.

Writing a living will for what medical procedures you do and do not want in the event of a serious, life-threatening emergency is free. Look into that. Give people some certainty about your wishes.

But all of this means looking death in the eye and thinking about it, engaging with it.

It means building a relationship with the concept of death and getting comfortable with your own mortality. That's hard. But it's necessary.

It won't be easy. It will hurt. And all the work you do won't really prepare you for big losses, losses of people that you deeply love and adore.

Do it anyway.

Death is what makes life meaningful. Death shapes life. Death is unavoidable, the ultimate destination of everyone on earth. (Again, unless you're an actual vampire. If so, please tell us your secrets.)

Living life means facing up to death. It's time we all started doing that.

That's the ultimate takeaway for this #TarotTonight, darklings: death is unavoidable, and death is what gives life meaning. Engage with it. Think about it. Don't try to ignore it or sanitise it. It is reality. Face it.

If you want a first stop on the road to death positivity and a great resource for learning about what happens to your body, funerary options, and weird death facts, let me recommend @TheGoodDeath.

Her books and YouTube channel changed my life as person dying for a living.

It's a first step. But death positivity is a process, not an action. And the more you engage with it, the more prepared you will be, practically and philosophically, for death -- both your own and of those you care about. That's really important and worth doing.

So there's your #TarotTonight, darklings. Death comes for us all. Death is amongst us. See death where it is, and be prepared for when it draws near to you.

The more prepared you are, the easier it will be to shape your legacy and to ease your loved ones' pain.

And in the process, you can be a kinder person by acknowledging the grief and loss of others, deal with your own, and work through the feelings instead of bottling them up and hurting yourself and others.

If this reading hit home tonight, please tip or hit up the wishlists of your humble diviner. Death is a huge part of my art, and a contribution to my art supplies would help immensely. ko-fi.com/A534F8R or alekseivalentin.tumblr.com/post/126294293…

Just remember: death comes for us all. Unless you're a vampire. Then I guess you are death and you come for other people. It's a trade off.