In October, the distance between daily life and the spiritual or otherworldly seems to diminish. The veil, we say, grows thinner.
Perhaps we feel it first in the light.
Daylight disappears before our eyes. An evening that, only weeks ago, stretched beyond supper now ends while we make tea. We draw the curtains earlier. Our reflections appear in windows through which we were looking at the garden a moment before.
Spring changes the light too, but its lengthening days promise summer. Autumn offers winter, the gathering dark, the knowledge that another year is passing.
Old traditions give this threshold a place in the calendar. In Irish folklore, the eve of Samhain was a night when the dead might return to their family homes. Halloween still carries something of that expectation: a visitor who might be more than a visitor, a familiar shape concealing an unfamiliar presence.
But why should the thought move us?
Perhaps because, beneath the costumes and fright, there is a wish we scarcely dare admit: to glimpse someone we loved, hear their voice again, have one last conversation.
We might have something to ask or explain. An apology that arrived too late, or a small piece of news we still instinctively want to tell them.
We imagine we would know what to say. Perhaps, given the chance, we would simply sit together.
Autumn brings empty fields and hedgerows, the smell of rain on earth and leaves beginning to decay. What growth concealed becomes visible again: a gate, a ditch, the distant outline of a house. The land opens as the days close.
It is easy to imagine that something else might become visible.
The veil might be as slight as the skin forming on cooling soup, a surface trembling at the smallest disturbance. Beneath it, something moves—or perhaps we have only caught our own reflection.
A door has two sides.
Two worlds.
And if we hope to look through, we must allow for something looking back. That is where comfort begins to trouble us. We want the return of those we love, but we want to choose who knocks.
As we age, memories may lose their certainty. Did we live that moment, or have we looked at its photograph so often that the image replaced it? Do we remember the person speaking, or a story later told about them?
Was that a dream?
Sometimes a face, voice, or gesture returns with such force that we hesitate to examine it. We scarcely dare speak. Our breath fogs the glass through which we are trying to see.
Then the moment passes, leaving the feeling of having come close to something we cannot recover.
Grief has many beginnings: the loss of a loved one or of youth, children leaving home, a house growing quiet after years of wishing for peace.
Even the year has its departures. The last warm evening goes unrecognised until we realise there has not been another. A chair is brought indoors. The garden gate closes earlier. We begin to live in fewer rooms.
Perhaps this is why autumn makes the veil feel thin. So many absences become noticeable at once.
We sit in our chairs and sip our memories.
Nostalgia is light reflected from past glories, magnified and cherry-picked until we can bathe in its glow: an achievement, a moment of belonging, someone who knew someone. Lloyd George knew my father—a music-hall song, an idiom, and a little boast about proximity to history. Perhaps the modern version is Andy Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame: the desperate need to be acknowledged, to have our existence confirmed by an audience, however brief. So our boasts grow larger than reality, and proximity becomes participation, a passing glance becomes recognition, a small moment becomes a legend we can inhabit.
Our minds dance over the burning embers and broken cobbles of the past, knowing where to place our feet. There are days of glory, but also shame; things we regret, words we cannot take back.
Our perception is just that: ours. Others remember differently. Their account of a shared moment may surprise, hurt, or bewilder us. Something we treasured may have been painful to them. Something that haunted us may scarcely remain in their memory.
We build our jigsaws from what remains, painting in the missing pieces until we forget which parts we supplied.
Perhaps that last conversation would be harder than we imagine. We have spent years choosing what to remember. The person we long to see might remember something else.
The ghouls dragging their chains through our shadows may carry things we need to recognise before leaving them behind: a regret, a grievance, an old version of ourselves kept alive too long.
Some things still ask something of us: an apology we could make to someone living, a story we could finally hear without interrupting. Others offer no remedy. We must carry them without letting them occupy every room.
There is a future to make, too. The past has brought us here, even when here is somewhere we never expected: a nettle bed, a thorn bed, a feather bed. Each has its surprises. Even among comforts, something may prick; even among thorns, we may find a place to rest.
Beyond the glass, the garden has almost disappeared. The last shapes dissolve into darkness: gate, hedge, the path we know by heart. Our reflections settle into the window, and for an instant the room seems to contain more than it did before.
We think of someone we would like to speak to. We imagine their voice, the familiar turn of their head, the pause before they answer. We do not know whether we are remembering them or making them present, but the distinction feels less important than it once did.
For a moment, we leave the curtains open. We let the darkness remain beyond the glass. We do not call out, and nothing knocks. Still, we stand there long enough to understand that longing is not only a door into the past. It is evidence that something in us remains capable of love.
Then we turn towards the room and the life still waiting. The kettle is quiet. A lamp is burning. Behind us, the window holds our reflection; beyond it, the night holds whatever it holds. We carry both as we move away: the people we cannot bring back, and the living world that, for now, is still asking us to stay.