The leaves have turned yellow. Some trees are gold all over, some are green and gold. This week the foliage is still on the branches. The leaves that have fallen to earth are like patches of fall colours, holding promises of more to come. When it rains, you can see it mulching, brown leaves coming apart and integrating with the darkening soil. There is death here, a good kind of dying. It gives back life. When the sunshine filters through the leaves, it looks like a page from a calendar, glossy and shimmering. Rain and sun, bright yellow and ochre, come together in Nature’s last glory call for the year. And though the summer months have been tempestuous, bringing death in floodwater and flash floods and landslides, autumn is a time of calming down, earth’s energies and furies expended. A time to retire from the mad whirlwind that is life so we can look forward to winter and all its comforts. But then came the news. A death, sudden, unbelievable. A dear one whose life has closed in death forever. Prematurely gone. It has now upturned the season and its celebrated calendar beauty. More than ever the falling leaves and the dying year have now come to represent mortality and the finiteness of life on earth. And the finality of death. Pain and bereavement makes one look for every detail to see where we had missed the signs of foreboding death. Scrolling through messages and trying to decipher tell tale signs. Is this what striving after the wind is like? How to remember the dead? There must be healthier and more caring ways of remembering them instead of the morbid period of grieving that our cultures dictate although it is difficult to emerge from the warm embrace of self-pity and guilt. Guilt at not having done enough, not having been there more, failing to read the signs and more. We are finite, we will never feel we did enough, we will never be able to give enough. Death shines an unforgiving light on life and living. And perhaps our part is to forgive ourselves our failings, and do better for the next person. Prioritise more, send caring messages in gaps between work, make short meet ups possible by trying, and being more honest with each other and encouraging honesty. We will never know what pain and self-doubt the other is going through if we don’t go below the surface of small talk. Become trustworthy, respect confidentially given information and refrain from spouting advice. Sometimes, people just need to be heard. We come from rain and mountains. But we also come from accumulated teaching and inherited pain. It takes a lifetime to sort it out and in the sorting, some people are always passing on their pain to others who are more vulnerable. Sometimes, people say, ‘they are in a better place’ after a death of someone who suffered in life, from sickness or emotional troubles, and that has a ring of truth about it. But maybe we could have all done our part to make their lives on earth less painful. It is sadly striking that passing into death should be seen as better than life. In death, the loved one begins to shine and their good points are revealed in a clear light. So too with this parting. She had a sweet flamboyance about her, in the best sense of the word. If she saw beauty in anyone, she would tell them, and by the telling, I know she affected lives positively. And she had a heart of discovery, looking for business solutions and just as eagerly looking for spiritual answers. A heart open to music, old and new. A heart for people, and it made people gravitate to her. There was so much life in her, so much worth that death comes as a betrayal of all that she could have been. Sometimes we need to remember that people are not supposed to only give and give. They need to receive too. Receive reassurances of their value, reminders of the goodness they plant in the lives of others, and of their infinite spiritual value. How will they know if we do not tell them?
