Touch of the Hag

I used to work in a pub, and I became really good friends with a guy there and his wife. It took us a while to realise we were both pagans too, which made us laugh, and since then although it has been a long time since we’ve worked there together we still keep in touch. They have a wonderful little girl, and last year gave birth to a gorgeous baby boy (they’ve asked me if I’d be his ‘un-godmother’, something I accepted with much gratitude and honour =) ). Through them I also got to know their mum, Iris (name changed to somehow ease my own unease at discussing something so close to me). Iris has been struggling with cancer for a long time now, and I got the call from my friends a couple of weeks back that she had suddenly rapidly declined and had been admotted to hospital. The doctor had told them over the phone that it could now be a matter of hours or days, rather than months. They called me that noght, and we arranged to go and see her together the next morning. I wanted to be there for my friends, and be there to look after the kids if need be, let alone get the chance to say goodbye to someone who I had met on only a few occasions but who had deeply touched me with her widsom and kindess each time.

It was really heartbreaking. I won’t go into how everything happened that day.

I got to see her after her son-in-law and the kids had seen her, and her daughter stayed there, so it was me, her and Iris. She wasn’t all there, meds playing with her mind and the pain in her body. I sat at the end of the bed, just being there, watching mother and daughter try to hold it all together yet at the same time come to terms with the inevitable. Then there came a moment when panic surfaced in Iris and the stench of fear rising off her like sweat – you could see for a moment she cought glimpse of her own oblivion. As I watched my friend comfort her and try to calm her as the wave of fear subside as quick as it made itself felt, amongst all the anguish I felt at watching such a kind person go through such pain, a distant part of me registered that I had just witnessed what the direct, unbridled touch of the Hag Goddess can do.

As I was watching my friend and Iris, it was actually as if I could see a veil being pulled down over her, the oncoming of the fear so tangable like deep dark velvet smothering. As if the Dark Goddess stroking her paper dry fingers across Iris’ veined cheek was enough to bring on madness and terror. The fear was seperate from her, but made itself all to present within her in that awful moment, and then the Hag departed with a bittersweet smile leaving exhaustion and fragility to fill in the space of her absence. All Iris could manage to say to us, myself and my friend, after that episode, was “Please know, this could happen to you too. At any time, it could happen to you too. Please remember.” When I left her bedside later, holding my friend as she finally let her grief swell into tears walking down the corridor, I couldn’t help wondering whether Iris meant the cancer, or the touch of the Dark Goddess.

She is horror and terror and our pain and our grief, our darkness and our despair. She is our strength, our courage, our love and our passion, our ecstasy. Are any of us strong enough to withstand her gentle yet mighty touch? Despite what the doctors predicted Iris is still with us, a huge blessing, despite the fact the goddess of death may claim her at any time now. I guess we all just have to remember that She is just a finger stroke away.