The Fifth Full Moon Has Passed: The Harvest Moon

The fifth full moon has passed since Dad died beneath the Flower Moon on May 1. When I began marking time this way, I wasn't really sure what I was doing. I only knew that the first full moon after Dad died felt important enough that I couldn't let it simply arrive and disappear. Plus, as I included in Dad's obituary, he was a man of celestial wonder so this makes me feel close to him. 

Since then, each moon has become a small marker in a year that otherwise seems to be moving far too quickly. The Strawberry Moon brought a labyrinth and sound bath. The Buck Moon brought a bicycle ride in Cape Charles and a permanent bracelet. The Sturgeon Moon brought a lunar eclipse, a cemetery tour, and my spectacularly unsuccessful attempt at stand-up paddleboarding on, or rather in, the James River.

This time was a bit different. I had been charging forward creating moments that reminded me of my youth and family adventures. The September full moon was the Harvest Moon, and it felt as though this moon should be less about going outward and more about gathering. The previous months had been about doing things, trying things, moving through experiences... you know, muddle through somehow. The Harvest moon felt more reflective. It felt like a time to take stock of what has happened since the last moon, to consider what I had accomplished, and to think about what I wanted to carry forward.

I spent much of Friday at home because I had gotten my COVID vaccination on Wednesday and my immune system had decided Thursday night that we were going to reenact every illness I'd ever experienced at once. By Friday afternoon, I was sitting on the back porch, tired and achy, but it was a beautiful day and fall had finally started to feel like fall. I missed the university's fall open house, and I had to remind myself that work continues without me.

That sounds obvious, but apparently I need reminders. We are moving into the fifth week of the fall semester. Academia feels precarious. Everyone seems to be trying to figure out what comes next while continuing to teach, advise, respond to email, attend meetings, and behave as though uncertainty is simply another item on the calendar. I'm tired, and I find myself hoping that I can simply keep my job for the next ten years.

That uncertainty has been running quietly beneath everything else this month, alongside all the estate work that still has to be done. Since the Sturgeon Moon, though, there has also been progress. Babushka has cleared and sorted most of Dad's house. I sold his Saturn VUE. I submitted the probate inventory. I've continued working through accounts, paperwork, bills, belongings, and all the administrative debris that follows a person's death. I've contacted estate-sale companies and begun thinking seriously about the next stage of emptying the house.

None of these things feels particularly monumental while I'm doing them. Mostly they feel like errands, obligations, and one more thing to check off a list with lots of tears in between the moments. But taken together, they are a harvest of sorts. Things that felt impossible a few months ago are now done or at least on their way to being done.

Then there were the apples. I had bought a huge old basket that looks positively witchy at a thrift store, and for the Harvest Moon I decided to fill it with papier-mâché apples made from newspapers Dad had saved. I tore those old newspapers into strips, soaked them in paste, shaped them into apples, added tissue paper to add color, and added leaves. They aren't perfect, which somehow makes them better.

The newspapers had been sitting in Dad's house waiting for whatever purpose he imagined they might eventually serve. Now some of them have become apples. I placed them in the old basket on my front porch, and there is something about it that I love more than I expected to. A basket full of harvest made from something Dad saved. Not preserved exactly as it was, but transformed. And, after I placed the apples in the basket a beautiful yellow garden orb weaver made her home on the front porch. So, I did what every spider-loving girl would do-- I made the porch off limits and added a sign that Webecca is not taking visitors.

The things we inherit do not always remain in their original forms. Sometimes memory becomes a story. A possession becomes something useful to another person. An old newspaper becomes an apple. A house becomes somebody else's home. A familiar life becomes a collection of stories we carry around inside ourselves. This grief is hard because it isn't just Dad passing but it is Mom having passed and my mother-in-law having passed just before her, and emptying a house that is haunted with my youth. This week I have been dreaming about old boyfriends and old friends who are no longer in this world. Each time I walk into my old bedroom now that the hoardedness has been removed, I can see the walls and they hold memories.

My own house is changing in other ways too. Our trees along the side of the house, where our bad neighbor had cut down the privacy we once had, have finally been planted. They look great. 

Life keeps arriving even while other parts are disappearing.

On Saturday, Babushka and I went to Apothec for a broom-decorating event. When I originally signed us up, I thought we would literally be making brooms. We were decorating cinnamon brooms instead, which was probably safer anyway although there was the hottest glue gun that burned the heck out of my thumb. There was something appropriately witchy and autumnal about decorating a broom on the day of the Harvest Moon, and after months of estate paperwork, sorting, probate forms, and cleaning, having time with Babushka keeps me going.

Then came Hollywood Cemetery. That evening I gave the Full Moon Tour beneath the Harvest Moon. About fifty people had signed up. Five months after Dad died, I found myself standing beneath another full moon in a cemetery, doing what I have done for years: telling stories about people who are gone.

There is an odd comfort in that. Cemeteries have always made sense to me because death isn't treated there as something that needs to be hidden or hurried past. The dead have names, dates, stories, families, monuments, odd details, and histories that can still surprise us centuries later. I spend a great deal of my professional and creative life reminding people that the dead are not simply gone because their stories remain. Now that idea has become intensely personal.

Dad's story remains too. I carry it into strange places now. This fifth moon has felt quieter than the others. There was no great physical challenge. I didn't have to stay upright on a bicycle or attempt to stand on a paddleboard. I didn't lose sunglasses in the James. I didn't have to prove anything. Instead, I gathered. I gathered old newspapers and made apples. I gathered people beneath the moon and told stories. I spent time with Babushka. I looked around at the things that have changed since the last full moon and realized that some things that felt impossible then are now behind me.

The Harvest moon is about recognizing what survived. It is about noticing what I managed to carry through a difficult season. It is about gathering what is worth keeping and figuring out what can be transformed.

Time keeps moving whether I acknowledge it or not. The semester keeps moving. The estate keeps moving. Houses change. Trees grow. Cars get sold. Newspapers become apples. Grief changes shape. The Harvest Moon has passed, and the basket is full. For now, that is enough.