Pass It On

This season is one of dynamic contrast.  Bright colors reflected in sunlight and charcoal death reflected in rain.  If your hair (if you have hair) is gray and you have reached that time in your life when you can ponder the changes rather than rushing past them onto something more demanding and commanding, then you know the contrasts are most important to you.  The shorter days tell stories of death and dying and endings and in the distance another brighter future.  The maples go out with flying colors and claim flamboyance as their curtain call.  The obedient plant, like other small perennials, turns flakey gray and dark and then shatters into ashes around a black spot, not even a hint of its summer beauty.

Even though the rhythm and repetition bring comfort to us, the movement and shifting bring inevitable endings that are bittersweet.  You can ponder the celebrating of lives on social media with friends who meet challenges happily and post the success of the goals they reached.  Joyful families, children growing like weeds, successful careers, and exotic celebrations.  Why would I want to read their worries and their failures anyway?  And yet one of the posts I remember so very well was about a young man revealing that his balding head had been a heavy burden which he was no longer going to carry around.  He was closing that door and moving on by accepting his appearance and only wearing a hat when it was cold.  He was in his thirties when many men begin to have that receding hairline.  I do not remember his birthday and wedding/anniversary celebrations including the photos of his beautiful daughter that they celebrate almost weekly nearly as much as his honest acceptance of this evolution.  Accepting the superficial concern and moving on.  Accepting the inevitable and moving on.

The circle remains unbroken.  Or does it?  I am just in another place in my life.  Those who have passed before me did not share this life of mine for many of these decades and therefore I can study faded photographs with nostalgia and not pain because their world was so different and so long ago.  We were together in another life.  They added richness to my memories and helped me get perspective even with their mistakes.  Dwelling on regrets will not change that history.  I hope the faded photographs of me are viewed the same in the future ahead as part of a complicated tapestry.  Not with regret at my moving on, but as acceptance that my life contributed something to theirs and it is now time to pass it on.  And now I will pass on a lovely trail we took.

Autumn is the more bittersweet of the seasons.