Tag: dying

Leafy Ghosts

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photo by Josh Scholten

The stripped and shapely
Maple grieves
The ghosts of her
Departed leaves…

And yet the world,
In its distress,
Displays a certain
Loveliness.
~John Updike

The maple’s leaves have let go
in the winds and rain
in a bid for freedom,
swirling to new adventure
and ending in
soft landing
one atop another.

There they lay
in leafy graveyard
among others
seeking release
from branching bondage,
each shaped differently
in designed diversity.

The collected pile slowly
assimilates in color and wilt.
Once distinctive foliage,
so green and grand,
from oak, chestnut,
walnut,  birch
and maple settle in
together at last.

In death
mirroring each other
just as birthing leaf buds
appeared indistinguishable
a mere eight months ago.

My eye now only sees
a mosaic carpet of jumbled
ghostly remnants,
dressing the ground
as they once adorned branches.
No longer do they
lift and dance in the breeze,
no more chemical exchange
of sunlight for fuel.

Distressed and done,
fallen and sodden,
each one lies
alone
together,
a chlorophyll coda
of lost loveliness.

All Flesh

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All flesh is grass.
Isaiah 40:6
photo by Josh Scholten

The moment one gives close attention to anything,
even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome,
indescribably magnificent world in itself.
– Henry Miller

With the light and warmth waning with autumn’s approach, we have likely mowed for the last time this season. The explosion of green in May has become the browning crisp of September. Our work may be on hiatus, but the grasses only appear to be resting.

Growth has gone to seed. The seed itself is gone as well: blowing in a gusty breeze, or attaching to a passing tuft of fur to ride to another destination, or traversing a bird’s digestive tract to eventually land at the base of a fence post, or simply landing into nurturing soil at the feet of the mother plant. There it is invited home once again.

The season of grasses, though unbearably short, is nevertheless perpetual. Half of the year nothing appears to be happening. Still its growth continues, invisible to the eye, all nuance and planned potential. Even as the plant dies back, it persists within the ever renewing and buried seed,  guaranteed a new life and purpose in another place and season.

Surely I too am grass, withering with seed falling.  Though gone with the wind, blown by the breath of God,  within that seed, His word endures forever.

And as to me, I know nothing else but miracles…
~ Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass

photo by Josh Scholten

Any Second

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photo by Josh Scholten

Walk around feeling like a leaf. Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.”
— Naomi Shihab Nye

Yesterday was an atypical summer day: cool wind gusts and intermittent rain showers, challenging our outdoor picnic family gathering.  It felt like autumn in July, with leaves loosening from tree branches, tumbling to the ground two months early. The gathering was in honor of the upcoming birthday of a beloved uncle, the sole survivor of five siblings, with two lost just in the last six months.  The inevitable shifting and sifting of generations is keenly felt; the middle aged folk, of which I’m a part, now bounce grandchildren on their laps rather than their own children.   The last ten years have changed much in the family tree.

I feel badly for the trees parting with their leaves prematurely.  I am sad our family is parting with our elders before we’re ready.

I am no longer invulnerable, protected by a veneer of youth and vigor.   Located high in the canopy of branches, I may wave bravely in the breezes, dew glistening like sweat on my skin, feeling the sun on my back and the raindrops running off my leafy shoulders.   Yet my grip is loosening, slowly, surely.  My color is subtly fading.  My edges are starting to fray, and there may be a hole rent here or there.  Yes, I am feeling more and more leaf-like, knowing how far I could fall any time.

That knowledge makes all the difference.   I hang on even more tightly while I can.

This is no time to waste.

photo by Josh Scholten

Waiting With Great Grandma

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Waiting Together–Great Grandma Emma, granddaughter Andrea, great-grandson Zealand

Emma Gibson–December 28, 1927- May 20,2012

Consolation

All are not taken; there are left behind
Living Belovèds, tender looks to bring
And make the daylight still a happy thing,
And tender voices, to make soft the wind:
But if it were not so—if I could find
No love in all this world for comforting,
Nor any path but hollowly did ring
Where ‘dust to dust’ the love from life disjoin’d;
And if, before those sepulchres unmoving
I stood alone (as some forsaken lamb
Goes bleating up the moors in weary dearth)
Crying ‘Where are ye, O my loved and loving?’—
I know a voice would sound, ‘Daughter, I AM.
Can I suffice for Heaven and not for earth?’

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

***********************************************

At last the entire family stood, like people seeing someone off at the rail station, waiting in the room…

…”So don’t you worry over me. Now, all of you go, and let me find my sleep….”

Somewhere a door closed quietly…

…Deeper in the warm snow hill she turned her head upon her pillow. That was better.  Now, yes, now she saw it shaping in her mind quietly, and with serenity like a sea moving along an endless and self-refreshing shore.  Now she let the old dream touch and lift her from the snow and drift her above the scarce-remembered bed…

Downstairs, she thought, they are polishing the silver, and rummaging the cellar, and dusting in the halls. She could hear them living all through the house.

“It’s all right.” Whispered Great-grandma, as the dream floated her. “Like everything else in this life, it’s fitting.”

And the sea moved her back down the shore.

~excerpts from Ray Bradbury’s “Death of Great-Grandma” in “Dandelion Wine”

What Will Be Required

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photo by Josh Scholten

“He will wipe the tears from all faces.” It takes nothing from the loveliness of the verse to say that is exactly what will be required.
Marilynne Robinson

Someone precious to our family is dying, after living a long and faithful life of loving devotion and service to God and the people she cared for and about.  There are tears being shed by those of us watching her grow weaker and drift farther from the shore of the living, hour by hour.  Her hands are still warm as we hold her firmly, asking her to open her eyes, acknowledge we are near, not depart from us quite yet.

But her goodbye will come soon and more tears will be shed.  We will have lost our anchor of over eight decades and will be adrift in the flood of our weeping.

He knows this is what is required of the living, so is prepared, shoulder and sleeve and hanky at the ready, to stem our flow and wipe away our every tear.  Death shall be no more, nor shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain.

As we watch her gathered into His arms and carried away, we know it is lovely and it is good.

And for that we weep tears of joy.

And the Dying Begins…

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It begins even though I’m unprepared.  No matter which way I turn,  autumn’s kaleidoscope displays new patterns, new colors, new empty spaces as I watch the world die into itself once again.  Some dying is flashy, brilliant, blazing, a calling out for attention.  Then there is the hidden dying that happens without anyone taking notice: a plain, tired, rusting away letting go.

I spent the morning adjusting to this change in season by occupying myself with the familiar task of moving manure.  Cleaning barn is a comforting chore, allowing me to transform tangible benefit from something objectionable and just plain stinky to the nurturing fertilizer of the future. It feels like I’ve actually accomplished something.

As I scooped and pushed the wheelbarrow, I remembered another barn cleaning ten years ago, when I was one of three or four friends left cleaning over ninety stalls after a horse event that I had organized at our local fairgrounds. Some people had brought their horses from over 1000 miles away to participate for several days.  There had been personality clashes and harsh words among some participants along with criticism directed at me that I had taken very personally.  As I struggled with the umpteenth wheelbarrow load of manure, tears stung my eyes and my heart.  I was miserable with regrets.   After going without sleep and making personal sacrifices over many months planning and preparing for the benefit of our group,  my work felt like it had not been acknowledged or appreciated.

A friend had stayed behind with her family to help clean up the large facility and she could see I was struggling to keep my composure.  Jenny put herself right in front of my wheelbarrow and looked me in the eye, insisting I stop for a moment and listen.

“You know,  none of these troubles and conflicts will amount to a hill of beans years from now.  People will remember a fun event in a beautiful part of the country,  a wonderful time with their horses, their friends and family, and they’ll be all nostalgic about it, not giving a thought to the infighting or the sour attitudes or who said what to whom.   So don’t make this about you and whether you did or didn’t make everyone happy.  You loved us all enough to make it possible to meet here and the rest was up to us.  So quit being upset about what you can’t change.  There’s too much you can still do for us.”

During tough times,  Jenny’s advice replays, reminding me to stop seeking appreciation from others, or feeling hurt when harsh words come my way.   She was right about the balm found in the tincture of time and she was right about giving up the upset in order to die to self and self absorption, and keep focusing outward. I have remembered.

Jenny herself spent the last six years dying, while living her life every day, fighting a relentless cancer that has been helpless in the face of her faith and intense drive to live.    She became a rusting leaf, fading imperceptibly over time, crumbling at the edges until two days ago when she finally let go.   Her dying did not flash brilliance, nor draw attention at the end.  Her intense focus during the years of her illness had always been outward to others, to her family and friends, to the healers she spent so much time with in medical offices, to her belief in the plan God had written for her and others.

So now she has let go her hold on life here.   And we must let her go.   Brilliance will cloak her as her focus is now on things eternal.

You were so right, Jenny.  Nothing from ten years ago amounts to a hill of beans. Except the words you spoke to me.

And I won’t be upset that I can’t change the fact that you have left us.

We’ll catch up later.

Jenny R --photo by Ginger Kathleen Coombs

 

Let Evening Come by Jane Kenyon

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written by Jane Kenyon as she was fighting terminal cancer

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.
Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.