The leaves are falling

For the first time in maybe five months or more I donned a long sleeved shirt today. I'd bought it and 3 others several months ago at a flea market/yard sale sort of place along Hwy 29. All brand new, brand name, still in the original plastic. The guy had maybe a thousand of them and I found 4 that were large (my size).....the rest were XL or bigger. Eight bucks apiece, about one quarter retail, I had been looking forward to the fall when it would be cool enough to wear them.

I look forward to fall each year. The cooler nights, while the days are warm and sunny. You can leave the A/C off and open the windows....let some fresh air in.

We drove west down Hwy 316, toward Lawrenceville, the four lane cutting exactly in half the old dairy farm I was raised on. The old homestead is gone now, the house, barns, trees and gentle hills scrapped flat in anticipation of another great slab of asphalt and concrete with shops and stores built thereon. The once fertile, productive sandy loam gone forever to instead grow monuments to consumption and the service society we have become.

But the trees that are left standing along the creeks and areas not yet ready to be developed are starting to turn here in early mid-October. The dogwood leaves are red, the poplars turning a bright yellow. Soon the mighty oaks and hickories will turn bright red and orange. They are beginning to shed now, but in a few weeks after a light frost followed by some brisk breeze, they'll shower leaves down to carpet the ground, crisp and cracking when it's dry and soft, spongy and quiet when wet.

Our destination is the Gwinnett Medical Center.........not a trip I had looked forward to......my Aunt Margaret is lying there, with an oxygen tube under her nose, he five feet nothing or less height shrunken against the pillow, daughters, brother, sisters, nephews, nieces and in-laws and friends gathering around, speaking quietly, smiling sadly as they remember a life well lived.

She's eighty four years old, she'll not see eighty five in the flesh, and to say she had a good long life seems to diminish her somehow, for she was not just old. She was a daughter, wife, mother, grandmother, aunt and great-aunt to so many nephews and nieces that I can't begin to name even a quarter of them.

Short she may have been.......she shrank even shorter as the years passed by. As long as I can remember her hair has been a beautiful white, like a glittering crown or halo on her head. Which seems appropriate to my memory, for I remember her as full of love........love for her family, not just for her husband (long gone) and her two daughters, but full of love for her extended family. I can never remember a time when she didn't show that love to all who knew her. Unconditional love that was evidenced by a concern for all of us. She seemed to beam when she saw any of us, even if like mine, the visits were not as often as they could have been. She would ask after us, our spouses, children and grandchildren, remembering their names, for she had a capacity for remembering them all.

Our family tree is a massive old white oak, the trunk still sound, the branches spreading widely with many a twig growing wildly, but her leaf will soon fall, to become compost for young oaks that have sprung up around her, who will hopefully stand the straighter and taller for feeding on her love.

I know it's in the order of things, but........

Damn, I hate the fall.