Seasons Wax and Wane

Summer fades into autumn. Days get shorter; there is a different quality to the light. Just as the bright spring green of the backyard turned into the deep green of summer, now that deep green begins to turn into the subdued tones of fall. The leaves on the early trees are already falling; the maple still stands green. Dead leaves start to dot the driveway, those leaves that die before even getting to change color. We have a good six weeks before the leaves will start falling in earnest, before the season when we would drive on the back roads, playing the game of trying to catch them out of the sunroof.

Time, which does not heal all wounds, but only makes them easier to bear, passes outside my windows. I look at the backyard, already so changed, with two trees gone in just this year. I am beginning to realize how much the process began, not in November or December with the hospitalizations, but back last fall, when the problems of daily living began to wear him down more and more. I am beginning to recognize when he began to give up. I’ve said it was October, after that last Lancaster trip together. But it was before that when he started pushing me to do more on my own. When exactly did he decide I should start driving whenever we were together? It must have been around this time of year, because it was on the Lancaster trip that I took over all the driving; I had been driving around locally before that. I think it was November when I changed the insurance to show me as the primary driver.

And I realize that now is the time when my mind starts the final countdown, leading up to our Valentine Anniversary. I thought it would start in December, when I could pinpoint the date he went into the hospital, or maybe the October trip. But I look out the window, and realize it is the beginning of the last season we spent together. Last winter came so mild; by the time the first snow came, he was already bedridden, already in hospice care. And so fall, a time of year we both loved so well, was our final season of normalcy. We were both still in denial of how quickly he was failing – or maybe just I was. But we still were living our normal lives, holding on to our normal routine.

Autumn days, fading to cold. Another season without him. Funny how “easier” can describe something still so hard.