The Relentless Turn of Fall

I have a mixed relationship with Autumn.

The parts I love: Leaves changing to the colors of sunset; the giddy excitement of back-to-school; warm, sunny days and cool, crisp evenings and the scents of fall.

But the days are getting shorter and nights are coming sooner. The perennials are closing and preparing for winter. The Canadian geese are honking their way south. And the hummingbirds have already disappeared from the feeder that is still sticky with sugar water.

I always get a little wistful and contemplative in the fall. Not just because of the colors fading, and the animals and plants curling up and closing inside themselves and their burrows.

It's because it was this time of year that I learned my mother had six months to live.

My mother was a fighter. She battled Stage 4 uterine cancer—which has a 15 percent survival rate. But she overcame it anyway, and then bladder cancer arrived next, which she fought for three more years. But the second cancer ultimately did her in. Radiation and chemo had taken their toll over a decade. She grew tired. She did not want to try yet another drug.

The autumn she started slipping away, my parents' lawn was also dying. Their grass was circled by tall pines and received very little sun. It was deteriorating to crabgrass and moss, with a few spare patches of green.

And by the time my mother’s last winter was coming, their lawn had more holes and dry patches than healthy grass.

Kind of like how humans become as we are dying.

One day when I was outside with their dog, I noticed their lawn was sicklier than ever, and riddled with mysterious holes. I asked my father what the holes were, and he said he thought it was wild turkeys looking for grubs, or perhaps mourning doves gathering seeds.

Groups of mourning doves were in their yard every day, cooing as they poked about.

It was as if they were aware of what was happening inside.

We knew my mother had six months to live because the doctor had told her. And that was only because I made her ask. My father accompanied her to all of her appointments, but he and my mother were good at pretending tough stuff wasn't real. The family didn't talk much about the cancer that was consuming her from the inside. No one wanted to name it. It was as if not talking about it would make it go away.

But I wanted to know what she was facing. What we all were facing.

“I know you don’t necessarily want to know the prognosis,” I said. “But the rest of us do.”

And all the doctor said was, “You will probably need to call hospice soon. That usually means you have six months or less.”

In the end, my mom lasted five more months. It was a long and arduous stretch for her—and yet not long enough for the rest of us.

She died on February 1, 2007.

Now, years later, I’m lamenting my 53rd autumn. I'm thinking about you, Mom.

I want you to know that people are decorating their yards with bright pumpkins and foam tombstones. I’m thinking of the popcorn caramel balls you used to make at Halloween with orange Jell-O. Or those gingerbread cookies in the shape of a ghost or a witch.

I’m thinking about we would carve pumpkins, and you’d roast the seeds sprinkled with salt. You made all of our costumes—from Raggedy Ann to Darth Vader to a princess and a dancer.

You loved this season—because right around the corner were more holiday festivities. More special time for us to be together as a family.

My freshman year of college, I took an Intro to Philosophy class, and we studied Friedrich Nietzsche. He said, “Notice that autumn is more the season of the soul than of nature.”

That describes it.

Every autumn, as the trees let go of their leaves and the flowers bend to the cold, my will stretches and resists against what is to come. The extroverted aliveness of summer gives way to a contemplative, quiet time. My soul readies itself for the long, dark months to come.

What season are you transitioning to right now?

What season if any are you afraid to name?

At times, the transition of seasons can seem cold, and heartless. But the change of seasons can also bring possibility—as we don’t know exactly what the future has in store.

Author Angie Weiland-Crosby said, “Autumn whispered to the wind, ‘I fall; but will always rise again.’”

I'm waiting for that rising. That time in six months when winter will again turn to spring.