Orphic Pain

Glorious Hekate...Keeper of the Keys, Guardian of the Gates...Mother. As common as it is to respectfully call a patron "Mother", I mean it in a different way when I say it to You. It has layers, and one of them is that You brought my life into the world when You didn't let me go through those Gates. 

Mother, does Orpheus know yet that it wasn't his fault? Even if he hadn't turned around, the woman who would have come back with him wouldn't have been the Eurydike he married. The story says the Immortal Ones didn't see him as having honor or it being pure and true love because he didn't choose to die to stay with her. Dying isn't the hard part. Living takes so much more from you.

The bard...telling everyone else's stories, the songs being a service to others. I like the version in which Zeus struck him down so no secrets of the Underworld could be revealed. That way, at least his death was important. Torn apart because others are tired of your mourning? That is, unfortunately, a very likely end for a bard like Orpheus. If you can still sing, then you're supposed to sing what the audience wants to hear. And if you can do that, then everything must be fine with you. People just assume you must be doing well in order to be able to perform.

It's a lonely pain. The dead are closer to you than the living. Still...so distant. And sometimes someone who is living right next to you can be just as distant. They aren't the same person. That journey to the Underworld... Sometimes you wonder if you ever actually made it back.