Chapter 39
Solar Return Moon Conjunct Lauren’s Natal Imum Coeli
The sun is low in the sky when I carry an armload of magickal tools to the firepit for the third time this week. I’m as somber as a pallbearer.
I’ve performed the ho’oponopono-based ritual for funerals, for breakups of friendships, for my divorce from Quent. I’ve never used this ritual lightly or for superficial arguments. Maybe I don’t use it exactly as others do, and maybe my way of forgiving and releasing is more permanent than some other practitioners, but I’ve made the practice mine, and it’s always been successful in cutting cords others have attached to me.
In cases where someone can’t let go of me over a course of months or years, even the most stubborn and needy relationship is usually severed by the third try. The first time is always the worst, with the strongest response once the other party realizes I’m cutting ties. Sometimes they show up physically the next day to attempt to hold onto me. Sometimes they turn passive-aggressive and try to sabotage my new path. They seldom go quietly if they aren’t ready to end whatever our relationship is.
As for me, I never perform the ritual unless I’m absolutely ready to let go of the other person, for forever. I may assuage my pain by reminding myself that they can always come back after they’ve healed or some time has passed and they realize what they’ve lost—me—but honestly, they never do come back. Not in the way I want. Time passes, and I’m not the same person as when they left, even if they still are.
The ritual may consider the forgiveness on the behalf of both of us, but honestly, it’s for me. Forgiveness doesn’t mean condoning the other’s behavior, and it’s not something to be given by force so they can feel free to hurt me again. Minor faults are easy for me to forgive, but the life-changing hurts are not, not until I’m ready. Anything else is a second injury to the existing wound, and it’s no one else’s right to tell me when to let go or when to hold on until they are living my path, in my body, and drawing breath through my nostrils.
I may have been persuaded, manipulated, pressured, and gaslighted in my youth to forgive others of wrongdoing because it was easier to railroad the victim than to force the bully or liar to be a better person. I certainly endured enough family and teachers telling me, either by word or by action, that my feelings didn’t matter, and learned to swallow them long before adulthood and a first husband who told me again that they weren’t important.
But I’m past that now. I’m old enough to make the choice to forgive when I damned well please and not a moment before. This releasing ritual aids me in that, but when I do choose to release someone, my intention is for forever.
Cross-legged, I rest comfortably on a soft, folded blanket atop the altar stone on the North side of the fire pit as I watch the wood char and burn. The deeper the sun sinks in the sky, the lower the flames until they dwindle over glowing coals.
I have no precious possessions of Jesse’s with me to share with the fire to break our connection. Yes, in my house, there are love letters and trinkets and sticky notes with jokes scrawled on them to brighten my day. His clothes still hang in the hall closet because he let me have the bigger closet. His weights and workout gear litter the spare room, just as he left it that last day he used it. His guitars perch on their stands in the den we turned into a recording studio where he and Sonnet and their musical friends played on weekends and late into some evenings on school nights.
Before he started working all the time in the early spring and gave up all his free time for hobbies and for me. Before something in him became anxious and avoidant all at once, like he was about to jump out of his skin.
I twist my wedding band with the single diamond, round and round and round, then pull it off to study the indention in my finger. This isn’t a past coven leader who was controlling or needy. This was a true partnership, a genuine love match, and no physical representation of our relationship could manifest more meaningfully than the mark left by the ring he put on my finger five years ago. I slide the gold circle back over my knuckle. Our lives are too intertwined to separate mine from his and burn away what we had together.
Pulling a cloth-lined basket to my lap, I scoop out the ingredients for this rite. As with every releasing ritual, the herbs and oils are indicative of the relationship or the other person or some memory I hold. As with everything in my life, I surround myself with things that mean something. Sometimes the corresponding herbs and oils are the equivalent of my flicking my fingers at the flames and saying, “Be gone!” to the connections the other person had to me. Sometimes, I’m holding my heart in my handful of herbs and honoring the love that has waned.
Tonight, I don’t have hemlock or wormwood or even dragon’s blood resin to toss onto the coals of my private fire circle. Instead, I have dried rose petals, pale yellow and faded red. I have powdered frankincense and cardamon. I have laurel bay leaves. I have dried orange peels that smell fresh when they touch the heat in the fire pit.
I scoop out handfuls of memories and love and fling them at the coals until nothing is left in the basket, not even hope. The scents are overpowering, but I lose myself in the billowing smoke until it clears, then pour myself a glass of wine.
It’s the last bottle of chianti Jesse brought home from the grocery store on a night when we planned to make spaghetti, garlic bread, and salad before curling up to watch TV together as we often did on our date nights. His head in my lap as I traced his hairline and kissed his cheek. My hand caught in his, pressed to his lips. Such sweetness between us.
But this bottle of chianti had never been opened. He’d ended up working that night at the local ER—a twelve-hour shift—after a full day at the clinic and being on call the night before. I’d made spaghetti with Sonnet instead, but never cracked the wine. Something had happened earlier that week that Jesse refused to talk about, even though I could sense how upset he was, regardless of how much he hid his distress behind wisecracks. Everything happened so fast, and I didn’t realize it until later.
Almost overnight, he’d turned from his usual lighthearted, cerebral, surfer-dude personality to dark and distracted. He’d been growing more agitated and listless, like the proverbial frog boiling to death as the temperature rose one degree at a time. All his playfulness faded away, and nothing I could do would make it come back. With my cancer scare, I’d needed his emotional support more than I’d needed it in all the years I’d known him, except for when I miscarried. I’d marched through hell and dragged him back and thought afterward that I was enough to keep him safe. I’d successfully loved him through his pain and buried my own as I’d been taught to do since childhood.
Starting the night of our abandoned dinner together, he became too busy with extra shifts to be there for me. We stopped talking because he was never home or always with a patient at the clinic. He was no longer available, emotionally or physically. Whatever was going on in his life that had him spooked failed to win my emotional support as well. I was too stressed dealing with my own shit to take care of Jesse’s issues, too. Or as Jesse once joked in the fourth year of our marriage, “We pick each other up real good, but it’s damned dire when we both have a bad day.”
Maybe I’m more to blame than I’ve let myself admit, and not because I was a woman failing her husband or selfishly putting my own needs first on a rare occasion, or any judgy nonsense like that, but because I’m a witch with powers that demand I pay attention. With great power comes great responsibility, and instead of putting on my big girl panties and pulling my world back together, I’d brushed my palms together and said, “Fuck my magick!” and walked away from it just as Jesse had walked away from that gnarled, smoking car and disappeared from my life.
I’d had the power to protect my loved ones, and it hadn’t been enough. I hadn’t been enough. What good was all the magick in the world if I couldn’t manifest a different reality?
I’m caught between not allowing myself to think about it and beating myself up for not being able to handle the deluge of crap that hit my life all at once. I learned at an early age that I was responsible for everyone else and at the same time, held to task if I let any of the fragile balls of stress I was juggling hit the floor. I’ve certainly kicked myself enough for letting down my guard so that Bianca Wilemon’s magick tricks took root where they never would have before.
I wasn’t vigilant and, as a Third-Degree High Priestess of The Morrigan, I knew better, especially with my skill set. I’m no rookie or fluffy wicca-bunny. Dealing with a crap-ton of other worries in my life should mean cutting myself some slack—I’d insist on my kids or anyone I nurture being gentle with themselves—but even at this age, I still have a hard time nurturing myself. My mom’s not been able to nurture me since I was twelve years old, and for a long time, Jan took on that motherly role until our rift over Jesse. I can tell myself I failed because I had no one to be strong for me, but that doesn’t help matters now. With great power comes great responsibility, and I have failed myself by not pulling my head out of my—
Fingers tight around the bottle, I stare across the backyard to where my bubble of protection meets the ground and to the wavering form huffing as it moves widdershins around my wards. It’s stronger now, but so am I. Bianca’s magick created her servitor so that all my failures and fears would feed it. I’ve created thought-forms of my own—like the three-headed dragon that used to guard my front gate and keep us safe—but they needed care so I didn’t starve them out of existence. Bianca weaponized her creation using my own anxieties, but that will be over soon. When I’m done here and the night deepens, I’ll face the servitor with every bit of magickal armor and ammunition I possess.
I pour chianti into the glass I’ve brought outside with me and sip it as I watch the sky turn lavender and pink. Swallows—or maybe bats—swirl overhead and dip into the trees near the house. This is my favorite time of night. Our favorite time. Until a few months ago, Jesse and I tried to catch every sunset we could from our back porch, often with a glass of wine and a foot rub amid conversation about the day. We’d watch the first stars of night appear in the west, then the constellations, as we talked about life, death, and the universe.
Staring into the coals and wisps of smoke from the fire pit, I lose myself in memories. I never expected to fall in love with Jesse. He was almost a decade younger and everything Quent wasn’t. I’d never been around a man as mentally stimulating—or sexually stimulating—as Jesse, but I fell in love with his funky way of expressing himself, his compassion for others, his unquestioning way of giving me the support I’d never had.
Jesse loved my kids and leapt into the role of cool stepdad immediately. After years of marriage hell with my first husband, I finally understood what it was like to have a joyous marriage. Not that it was perfect and not that we didn’t have ups and downs, but we always had each other, and I’d always felt… loved.
I finish my single glass of wine and set the glass in the edge of the grass next to the fire pit. Pushing myself to my feet, I kick the blanket behind me and plant my bare feet on the altar stone. It’s cool to my soles, even after sitting on it for the last hour.
Again, I twist the gold band on my left hand. No. I can’t throw it in the fire, even if the thought crosses my mind. There’s too much love locked into it.
I clear my throat. “Soul of Jesse Matthews, I call you forth to commune!”
The wisp of smoke curling upward from the glowing coals suddenly belches black clouds. I step back, toes still on the stone. I adjust my stance, one foot pointed sideways enough that I won’t easily fall over.
The black smoke swirls and rises, takes gray form, solidifies in living color. Jesse—my Jesse—stands in front of me. He looks exactly as he did the day on our first date almost six years ago but maybe a little more nervous. His eyes beam above his lopsided grin.
“Hello, Wifey-licious.”
I can’t help but smile back. This is his energy, his life force as it was during our early days and middle days. Nearly to the end of our marriage, actually. Playful. More than anything, my Jesse was always playful. I don’t sense any of the weirdness of the version of him at the lake. Everything about the form in front of me is familiar.
Even the growing sadness rolling off him in waves. Other than after my miscarriage, I’ve felt that rarely in him over the years. Usually when a patient couldn’t be saved. Dealing with the death of his parents. And then those last few weeks before he didn’t come home and all the gossips in town forgot how much they had loved him.
“Jesse,” I whisper.
His smiling eyes cloud. His cheeks scrunch with pain. He reaches for me, golden light escaping from his skin, and envelopes me in a bear hug. “I’m so sorry, Lauren.” He sobs into my shoulder. “I’m so sorry. I really fucked up. I couldn’t fix it.”
He shudders in my arms, like a cold, wet kitten in winter, but I’m still and straight under his heavy embrace. I keep my armor raised, something he’s not seen since those early days when my previous marriage fractured beyond repair and I was wary of new relationships. Gradually, I surrender to the moment and shape my arms into a loose hug. His entire body turns to golden light, warm, loving and loved.
I let out a wail and draw him tightly against me. “I’ve missed you, Jesse. So much!”
How do I tell him what losing a partner is like for a witch? As an empath and intuitive, I could feel his energy withdrawing from me, focusing elsewhere. I’d blamed it on his work, on my health issues, on a million things. But I’d known in my gut when his energy drifted away. Years of having his full attention, like a constant blast of oxygen at high altitude, and then the stream of life force lessening until it was no longer there. This is exactly how people think of others as dead to them—because their life force, or where it’s channeled, changes either instantly or over time. The faster it disappears or redirects, the more noticeable, but only if you’re willing to notice. But that’s what has hurt more than anything else: the withdrawal of his connection with me, without notice, without reason.
“I love you, Wifey. But I need to set you free or this rot inside me is going to devour you, too.”
“But—” I pull back to search his shining face for answers.
“Laurie-licious, you don’t know me anymore. I need to let you go so you can live again. Really live.”
“I-I don’t understand.” Even if this ritual was meant to release him, I’m not ready. I’m not. Not anymore. Not after being here with a ghost from my past. All I need is the flimsiest of excuses from him and I’m willing to never let go.
“Jesse, no. Don’t you leave me behind! I need you here with me! I’m not giving up on you!” The same words I’d spoken when I’d found him giving up on himself after we lost the baby. They spill out automatically like a spell that’s good for only one use.
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