Webs of Witness
They are held in their last moment over our front door. It took me days of checking, using the frame of the window as a barometer to the smallest of movements, to realise They had passed.
In late Summer I became aware we shared a home after I carelessly vacuumed the waft of loose entangled threads in the sun ray window frame above the door. In attempt to atone for my lack of noticing I came to arch my neck to offer hello as I left the House or linger as I curtained the night. They became reassurance. I mistook them dead many times before I read that a Cellar Spider’s superpower is stillness, suspending their long thread-like selves upside down from the mass of threads woven. I found Them actually dead after a particularly harsh un-Cornwall-like cold spell, when our ill-fitting but dignified wooden door allowed Winter to seep inside and through Them. Had they died of cold or hunger?
I can not bring myself to interfere in Their passage and have wanted to offer them dignity and my small gesture of tending. I had thought about gently gathering their remains and placing out on the earth, but suspect they will dust in my hand. And why move Them? They are a delicate daily reminder of the transitions inherent to Life, as they let go of shape and disperse into All. They are a practise of noticing and honouring all Kith and Kin.
And I also witness their pencil line skeleton is holding my grief. I can tend to this passing in this time-place.
Later, once more I will slowly read twice the name of each Palestinian honoured on my screen and carry them to my heart. It is what I can do. A tea-light will bathe the name of Muhammed Waseem at its side, a too young Palestinian boy once witnessed orphaned and unaware. I vowed never to forget him.
To notice is a radical act. As verb, “to treat as worthy of recognition or attention”. To offer heart and tend, another. No matter how far away, ridiculous or pointless it seems, each act matters. To honour as human and more-than-human, as relation, inherently connected in Life and Death.
Last night driving through dark our headlights shaped a hedgehog just before our tyres framed it. Thankful to have not hit it, but fearful it would not fair so well next time, we did a U-turn. My Daughter skilfully scooped it up with gentle assertion and placed it amongst the verge for it to unfurl from fright in a safer place. We drove home with talk of worry for its onward journey and a car full of hedgehog facts offered by my encyclopaedic Daughter. It was the first live hedgehog I have seen in decades.