Abstract
In the late autumnal woods near my house a few golden leaves hang thinly from branches, their erstwhile companions now forming a thick carpet underfoot. In the peace of this place I think of how nature left to herself freely surrenders to the rhythm of life and death, the cycle of the seasons. I lean against an old tree and muse on the miracle of the powers of renewal that are hidden even now in its roots and behind its strong protective bark.
And I reflect on the departing year that has been filled with personal bereavement against the background of immense societal and global loss visited on us by the coronavirus. How to take a lesson from nature and learn the art of surrender from the trees that freely give up their leaves when their time has come?
For some of my dear friends and family, their time had indeed come. They had looked for death to free them from the pain and stress of ageing from which even the best human effort could not entirely deliver them. And I could let them go, sadness mingled with much gratitude for memories of happier times that will surely continue to nourish me, as nutrients feed the trunks of trees whatever the weather.
From my vantage point in the woods, I watch a single solitary leaf spiralling silently towards the ground. And I think of the major loss of one deeply beloved person who was central to my life, whose death I feel deeply within the very core of my being. This loss is different from the others. My dear sister has left world and the disappearance of her unique embodied presence that is never again to be seen, heard, touched pierces my soul. This reality still has power to shock and fill me with grief. I think perhaps I’ll never be reconciled to it.
Where is she now?
Her ashes scattered on a hilltop are now indistinguishable from the earth onto which they fell, at one with the carpet of leaves in this wood in the process of disintegration.
That hill is precious now, as are these woods in which I stand remembering. The power of place provides an anchor at a time of emptiness and grief.
Can there be something more: some unimaginable personal continuation into a different yet connected form of being, drawn by inexpressible Light and Love of which our love is but a pale reflection? Or is this fragile hope fashioned from the desperation of loss and longing?
Like a bare branch stretching nakedly to the sky, I throw these questions to the heavens.
No answer, definitively. How could there be this side of eternity, no matter what some theologians say? I must live the questions, bravely and as open to beauty and the wonder of life as my beloved sister lived.
And as the seasons revolve I must as surely return to the woods and the hillside. For, as R. S. Thomas put it, “prayer, too, has its phases”.