Turning of the Season

Rain, sleet, and snow have been constant companions these last few weeks in west Michigan. The trees, aflame with color, are extinguished as the wind and water strip them to their branches. The earth is waiting for snow.

For the last few years October has been a bitter month. One of my best friends from college died in early October four years ago. It was sudden, tragic, and left everyone who knew and loved him asking questions with no closure. It stripped the few colors still left in my world and left me emotionally bare and shaking in the wind.

Slowly, as it seems to be the way with nature, my Octobers, which were once my favorite month, have begun to radiate beauty. This year I felt the familiar pain as the anniversary of his death came and went, but I was able to meet that pain with gratitude. It seems a strange thing to feel in the face of death, but gratitude for a life lived reduces the sting of loss.

I am grateful for the moments I could spend with my friend all the years we knew one another. I feel gratitude for the friendships which have been deepened and fortified in the wake of the loss. If I could undo, though some magic or rite, the loss, I would, in a heartbeat. And yet, my heartbeats are a type of magical rite with gratitude serving as a potion mixing memory with the present moment to conjure up the presence of my friend in my mind.

As the season turns, and snow will cover the earth once again. The leaves, pulled by roots from deep in the earth in the Spring, are finished with their existence and return to the soil. The cycle begins again. I will never forget my friend and the love we shared. The death of leaves will always remind me of his life.

This Blessed Moment

Time gets all weird on you when you age. The past seems so recent, the present moves by too swiftly, and the future holds a chilling conclusion. As a child I remembered how ANCIENT something was if it was only a few years old, or how one month felt like a year, and a year was a thousand lifetimes.

Our five-year-old son, Oliver, has begun playing with the idea of time. He tries to imagine what he played with and how he talked when he was three. He speaks as if it was decades ago, “way back when I was three, or even earlier way way back when I was a baby.” He has no idea how to guess the age of someone older than ten. I was sixty-something the first time he guessed. He now knows the correct age. And repeats it often. Too often.

The phrase, “now is all we have,” didn’t make sense to me when I was younger. I felt infinite and immortal. “Now” meant forever. My feelings were huge. So was my ego.

As my body aches and male pattern baldness switches on, I am much more diminished. Thank God.

The here and now is painfully real to me. It makes me notice things about my surroundings. And it helps me give thanks. Even if it’s to no one or thing in particular. I say thanks.

Thank you for giving me consciousness to be aware of this moment. Thank you for blooming tomatoes. Thank you for love. Thank you for Taika Waititi. Thank you for making me a silly sack of emotions.

I give thanks that I live at a time when I can publish these silly thoughts with the push of a button; and, perhaps a stranger will read something true in my words. Even though it sounds absurd and illogical, I say thanks.

Because, if not now, when?