O Beautiful Death

Autumn has arrived.  The calendar reminded me that today is the first official day of Fall.  Fall is here but Summer has a white-knuckled grip on the calendar and a death grip on the temperatures, too.  We’re still in the 90’s and its dry and Summer is not giving mercy from the heat.  It hasn’t rained in weeks and the ground kicks dust at my feet when I cross the grass.  Even still, the leaves are beginning to change and I have a pang in my chest to move with it, to let change envelope me and take me hither and far.  Something stirs in my when Fall comes.

I noticed a hint of color in the leaves last weekend while I was driving the tree lined roads near my home.   It seems to start slow, doesn’t it?  A little red dabbled here and a little golden there and then in a matter of days, the show comes to life in full stage and pageantry.    Rubies dance the landscape with oranges.  Green sings solo while yellows and browns accompany in notes of beautiful harmony.  And all of this happens against the backdrop of a crisp blue sky.  Oh, the performance of fall and the satisfaction of a good show!  It leaves me humble and content.

This is my time.  I am a Fall girl!  Any time during the year, I can close my eyes and go there.  It’s my happy place.  I think of the Autumn season and smell the cider, see the apples hanging ripe from the trees, hear the children running through the corn maze and picking out pumpkins in the pumpkin patch.  Festivals.  Families.  Friends.  Gather.  Football.  Brightly colored scarves and team jerseys.  Boots and bonfires.  Can you hear it?  Can you feel it?  Can you smell it?  It’s such a wonderful season.  Don’t you think?

Thinking deeper, one may concur with me that the Fall season is completely sarcastic.  It is.  We put mums on our front porches to honor its arrival.  We hang flags that wave “happy fall y’all”.  But it’s the dying season and we usher it in and celebrate it.  There’s nothing happy about dying.  In fact, it hurts to lose someone even if we know that their death gives relief to pain.  But then Fall…everything is so beautiful, and everyone is so alive with fellowship and love.  We forget that we celebrate dying, yet in dying, there is life.  Beautiful life. 

The colors, the sights, the sounds, the sweetness of togetherness can be observed in honorable appreciation but if we are open to understanding, Fall can comfort us on a much greater level by showing us that the process of dying can be as beautiful as a life well lived.  The seeds we scatter along our lives show up each new year in each new generation and new growth.  Sometimes I catch myself working the way my grandfather worked or speaking a word or phrase that my beloved friend would speak.  They’ve both been gone for years but the seeds they planted continue to grow through me.  One day, I too, will pass from this beautiful life into the arms of Jesus.  Death has a sting but we think on Fall as our ointment.  Shall we say to one another, we will mourn the absence of life and we may dread the coldness of loss but first we will celebrate the life that gives beauty to death.  O beautiful death.