The First Tree

From in between the opened slats of the blinds on my kitchen windows, I can see it. Each autumn, it is the golden harbinger of the coming season of crisp air and darkened evenings. Muted laughter through closed windows as children walk home from school, jackets unzipped. Somnolent bees hovering over brilliant mums, preparing for winter. It’s the first tree to turn – a radiant yellow, then a gentle brown, its leaves finally resting in a wispy pile sloping down a nearby hill.

I want to hate this tree. In fact, I want to hate the fall altogether. In the last two years, I have grown to dread this previously most-welcomed change of season. When you lose someone, every season becomes littered with the debris of loss and saddled with all of its accompanying sadness. There is nothing which can’t be despised when thought of in the context of loss. Especially things you once loved.

Fall was – is? – one of those things. My son especially loved the fall, too. As a child with severe neurological impairment, causing an inability to regulate his body temperature, the cooler fall temperatures were just cool enough to allow him to be outside comfortably without sweating and overheating, but not so cold that we looked like bad parents for leaving a heavy jacket at home. The fall was “his” time of year – so we were sure to pack it with lots of outdoor activities. Apple picking. Family walks. Watching his younger brother play football. A Halloween and harvest abbondanza – all leading to an eventual Thanksgiving weekend to usher in that other magical season. The one where his eyes gleamed with awe at colored lights and animated decorations.

Because his body betrayed his ability to participate in even the most mundane pastimes, his enjoyment of the world around him was reliant upon gathering up the sights and smells of the season through his own senses, with help from us. A crunchy leaf across his cheek. A taste of mushy pumpkin pie. A roll in his wheelchair through an apple orchard. All of these produced a hearty smile.

Fall, then, which had certainly been my own favorite season before, continued to be so, since it garnered such happiness in my child. It was his spring. The time of year when he blossomed, despite the inherent decay implied by the calendar’s dwindling days. It was his time.

Until one dazzlingly bright and sunny fall morning when he didn’t wake up.

It’s hard to keep loving the fall – or anything – when you lose your child. It’s irritating to endure the litany of insignificance present in the everyday – and especially present in the everyday of a time of year you once loved. A time of year that, in those glimpses of healing moments, you desperately want to enjoy – for the sake of your surviving family and your surviving self. But one that, unfortunately, weighs down upon you like an albatross. Or the thick, gnarled trunk of a golden-leafed tree on the cusp of autumn when it rests on your heart.

And so begins the fall. The first tree being the portent of this personal season of dread, fraught with memories of despair and laden with sorrow.

Or can it be transformed once again into a time of promise and hope? Can it flourish once again as the season for discovery and delight it once was for my son?

It can. I saw the first tree this morning. And so I believe it can.