Early October

The rain usually begins to fall in early October.  It plasters bright yellow leaves to dark wet pavement, sticks Tthem to the sides of your car and gets them caught under the windshield wipers.  On breezy days the leaves tumble down like confetti; driving to work feels like a celebration.  We get a few days to enjoy the color of impending winter, a few days before it's time to rake the leaves and let the kids dive into them, when trees simply show off.  Early October heralds a transformation from warmth to coldness, from color to grey; but we embrace it with joy for the short reprieve it gives us.  A respite from the summer heat, and a pause before the chill of winter, it intrigues us somehow.

This year there has been no rain.  Early October has been dry, the colors dulled by a lack of summer storms.  They say the leaves will not make a big show of themselves this time, that we will wake up one morning and find they've blown to the ground in heaps of brown, leaving the blue-grey mountains in the distance looking naked and sad.  The trees in my yard will remain in their standing places, reaching their spindly branches upward, daring winter to do it's best.

A week ago I stood beside my father's bed.  I held his hand as best I could but he couldn't squeeze my hand in his like he used to when I was a girl.  I played a song for him, one we used to sing as a congregation in church, and I watched his face, calm and peaceful as he took it all in.  I turned my head to hide my tears from him; he cried so easily already, and it seemed unkind to let him witness my heart breaking because I knew this was the last time we would share these songs together.  We watched red birds out his window, fighting over deer corn and birdseed, saw a few birds that neither of us recognized.  He watched for deer dropping by. I watched for a sign.

Signs never come the way we expect them to.  I suppose if it happened that way we would say it was no big deal.  The sign I wanted wasn't outside that window, or in that room with my dad's heaving chest.  It never came in all the hours I sat beside him and wished he could stay a little longer--be himself again for just a little while.  I missed him so, already, since years before he took his last breath and his memory began to fade, transforming him into someone I hardly recognized.  Someone who often didn't recognize me anymore.

Two years ago in the tumbling dry leaves of early October I took the same drive through the country to my parents' place where I sat beside my Mama in the big red recliner she was so happy to have.  I held her hand in mine and smiled into her face.  I saw the Mama of my early childhood smiling back at me--the mama that nurtured me and treated me with tenderness.  She wanted to know if I was okay.  Even in her last hours, she was worrying about me.  I told her I was happy.  It was a lie, but at the time, it seemed only right to tell her what she wanted to hear.  Her sigh and smile, her relaxed hand in mine let me know that my words made peace in her heart, and I felt nothing but pure love for her in that beautiful moment.  I became a daughter without a mother, but I didn't know yet, what being motherless would come to mean.

Early October, my dad sat in his recliner looking forlorn.  This man sat pondering the great unraveling of a life carefully built through years of sweat and tears, through poverty and times of abundance.  The cords of life we so tightly twisted together, were finally fraying at the edges, threatening to unfurl and fall in a pile at our feet, everything unwound.  His eyes lost their focus for things in front of him.  When we talked, I saw a far off gaze in them; he was looking past this place and time and I couldn't reach him anymore.  He was there, I was here, and between us a great divide.

Mid October he cried a lot.  He told me the story over and over again, sometimes forgetting I was his girl.

October, a month of transformation, of celebration and yes, even warning that something more dreadful is to come, heralds for me now a reminder of how stuck we become in living here in cycles year after year, expecting all that is beautiful to be eternal.  But nothing lasts forever, does it?  Not even the love of a parent for a child, or a faithful husband for his wife.  Nothing living survives the first frost of Late October.  Houseplants get brought inside, gardens turn brown and even the grass turns sallow, yellow with winter's death.

It is two years now since I became a motherless daughter.  I was just beginning to learn how to feel about missing a parent from my life.  She died on a Sunday morning, October 11.

Last Monday night I drove in the dark to my father's bedside.  I kissed his head and spoke loving words in his ear.  He was barely breathing then, not responding at all though I hoped he heard me say "I love you".  I kissed his forehead once again, squeezed his big hand and left him there.  I knew I would not see him alive again.

It was a Tuesday morning, October 11, when he took his last breath and left us all--adults but orphaned.

Was this the sign I was looking for? Was this day and time,  when my creators took their departure from the cycle of seasons, the symbol of hope I needed?

Mid October, I sit on my couch and cry.  I'm trying to keep my eyes focused on the here and now but the here and now is not very encouraging.  I wonder if I'm meant to be here still.  Am I fighting a battle that should be left for God to decide in my stead?  Why do I keep connecting myself to a machine every night, racking up medical bills I can never pay, and for which I will pay by trapping myself in a cycle of poverty where my needs and those of my child are never fully met.  Is it worth all this--this life of "less than" that I have to live in order to survive?  Who am I helping more than I'm hurting here?

Late October's coming fast.  One windy night and the trees will be starkly bare, the ground scattered with the remains of summer that must be raked away and destroyed--forgotten.  I wonder if all we are and all we do in this life is merely in preparation for October; the beginning of an end, and the end of something we desperately wanted to hang onto.

This year we will dutifully play our roles.  We'll clear away the dregs of summer, pray for rain.  We will search for the bright side of all the transformation and try to find the lessons in our trials.

But my mom and dad, they already lived all their Octobers.  They lived the early weeks and transformative days and the stark, empty skeletons of trees as winter approached.  They lived them all until they couldn't anymore, and in the sunrises of Early October mornings, they closed their eyes to it all.  They left it to us--all the doing and changing and struggling.

And since early October has passed, and mid-October forces itself upon us, I am witnessing how real the struggle is.  I'm acknowledging that for me, it isn't over.  My early October morning hasn't come.

So I will carry on.