Leaves in autumn


My mother leaves in autumn. It is not text book dying, pain carefully managed in a contemporary setting, but a struggle for her to go. The nursing staff are kind, but there is only so much you can do at the end without breaking the laws of our country. I think about birthing, the intense but somehow worthy pain of labour, and wonder if death is the same, hard work to let ourselves go, stubbornness and fear slowing the process.

We drive across the region, wineries and orchards marking the space between the twin cities. He chooses the Cadillac, mum’s last ride the classiest of her life. There are just the three of us: me sitting oddly on the right minus a steering wheel to hold; mum in the back, her koru-crested casket a nod to simplicity. When we arrive, I place the flowers from my friend’s garden on top of the poem, grateful for their colour and compassion. “If I die in autumn”, I begin as I stand beside her at the catafalque. It’s a couple of days short, but she wouldn’t mind. Already the potted petunias have started to fade, and leaves are dropping in the Bay. 

If I Die in Autumn

If I die in autumn
Let the golden leaves fall
Crunchy under foot,
A sign of seasons passed
 
If I die in autumn
Feel the chill upon the air
The summer heat has disappeared
The low sun striking
Dust motes floating through the air
 
If I die in autumn
Turn the clocks back
Daylight saving slips away
Like me, gone for all time
 
If I die in autumn
Remember the spring, the summer of our lives
And know that they will come again, these seasons
After the winter of our grief.


Later, I play a song she loved, her long and agile fingers sweeping across the piano keys of her childhood. It is Julie Andrews, singing of a tiny white flower, and of hope.

 ~

It has been a year now: yet the poem I’ve written; a posy; his presence - my friend, the funeral director; the music in the chapel; the life of Joy. I remember it all, and Edelweiss will always make me cry.  

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