October
“October
is the opal month of the year. It is the month of glory, of ripeness. It is the
picture month.”
Henry
Ward Beecher
I
wonder how you are celebrating October this year. Yes, football games, I’m
sure, and pumpkins, though fewer than usual. Maybe some Halloween decorations in
the front yard, a loaf of pumpkin bread for breakfast. October feels like the beginning
of winter, but with outrageous color. The trees are dropping leaves already and
the acorns smack against the roof of my car, sounding like bullets. The porch-cat is
demanding more food, winter fattening has begun, and I ordered a big fluffy bed
for him with high sides to keep the wind off and the cold out. He’s spoiled for
a mostly-feral cat.
October,
which is usually my favorite month, feels different to me this year. Flat. The things
I look forward to are mostly missing—long walks in yellow woods, the crunch of
leaves underfoot, that smell of wood smoke in the air. The pandemic has put a damper
on autumn. Just when I’m getting juiced up to celebrate the holidays, someone else
dies, or tests positive, or is so sick they require infusions. It feels
disrespectful to celebrate, even to hang a fake skeleton in the yard—too many
human bodies are piling up in morgues.
Every
year I write about my mother’s last visit to place flowers on the family graves
on Halloween day. How beautiful the mountains were with trees of red, orange,
and yellow dressing up the landscape all around us. The day looked like a
painting from a Hallmark card. All Mother could muster was that it wasn’t as
pretty as in past years, the flowers we brought weren’t right, the roads I
took to get there weren’t right, and I had brought all the wrong tools and equipment.
She complained about everything so she wouldn’t have to focus on the fact that
she was dying, that this would be the last time she decorated the graves, that
soon she would lie among them. Even so, was a gorgeous, sunny day. And I
cherish the memory. I can still see the sun shining through red maple leaves.
That’s
the other thing about October—everything looks beautiful one day and dead the
next. Like Mother, we’d like to skip that part—just go from glorious October to
beautiful April and skip the cold, dark, months in between. But there is no
rebirth without death. As Murray Stein says about the passage through middle
age, “you have to find the corpse [of your former self] and bury it.” (In
Midlife, p.35) October explodes with her last great burst of color, and then
allows herself to rest in darkness and renew. It looks like death, or suspended
animation. But it’s part of the life cycle, it’s a mandatory gate we pass
though on our way to renewal. It is our chrysalis stage. It’s not a one-and-done
thing, either. We make this passage many times in our lives, and we are born anew
on the other side. Different, sometimes unrecognizably so, and always unsure of what
comes next.
Life is what comes next.
Germination, regeneration. But for now, it is time to rest and allow the transformation
to take place.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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