Autumnal

By the time I stepped outside, the leaves were on fire. The embers enveloped the air and grew up inside my dying body in the same way they expanded through the sinews of the branches of the tree. These, although manufactured in the places they were planted in the city, still breathed life to the last, even to the last shred of hope and that ever lingering last thread that interwove the tip of the branch with the thinning of the stem. We would see in the Summer how the leaves would fly on their wings, the branches like fingers before we started decaying to bone. How far even, had these younger trees come, knowing they will live to the last?

Such is life that the young must even let go when there is so much left to do. I cannot comprehend the callousness and mercilessness of the wind every moment another outspread red or yellow splash of color was pulled from the graying bark. Yet, I digress. The city trees still, although out of their natural habitat, were accepting of the coming sunset. I did not have that strength to fall away gracefully with nothing to my name. The timbers are content to know they are one of many.

The doctors gave no indication of the amount of time left. As always, people believe “the ones in the white coats” are the manifestation of the heavenly angels, counterparts of the Almighty God. Their knowledge made them God, yet is extension of life the endlessness of life? It certainly is not.

Slipping through the only door of Apartment 43, the blaring red light carried more weight in my eyes, pulling me in like a pulsing heart monitor. Oh, my God. Carolyn called again? She’s probably checking to see if I’ve died yet. My pressing date with destiny was uninvited and I couldn’t shake the inexorable feeling that nothing was right. But with so many dying and fewer still to care why was I dwelling? And why do I count Carolyn, my neighbor, with the apathetic bunch?

Strolling slowly along the concrete walk, my eyes averted to the green beside me. The color was slightly off, as the red and yellow were more prominent. Aloft the buzzing taxis and humming cars, a sparrow finally crested onto the the lightest branch. Suddenly, he swiftly lost the grip, as there was nothing to hold onto. Cleverly, it made it out like nothing happened, or he had planned it as a show all along, and rolled downward and then upward with well-intentioned flapping of wings.

A welcome ringing thrice over was all I heard above the overly thoughtful pounding of my boots. Every time I did focus on the sound, those sounds I never noticed before, I wondered who else may one day appreciate them the way I did now, after the way I never did before this second. The doctor said to focus on grounding, on finding the world around me and learning to look outward. It was like getting the price of two-for-one. I was getting a doctor and a therapist.

Behind an irrelevant brochure for local landmarks, since Carolyn was born and raised here, she held it loosely and savored the sipping, slurping loudness of the café macchiato. And I couldn’t understand. People should grip things tightly without ever letting go. I held this old diner in high regard now since the diagnosis last Tuesday when I used to complain about the slow service and undercooked roast beef. She was not odd, Carolyn, but simply ordinary. That was a comfort, though, in these last unnumbered days.

Carolyn’s eyes lifted from a downward place and rose like a sunrise as she heard the shuffling and whipping of the brown coat wrapped around my dying soul. I slipped into the red squeakiness of the diner seat and breathed a heavy sigh. I confess it was partially out of wanting attention and partially out of exhaustion. Energy was at zero.

“I have something to show you,” Carolyn chimed as vividly as possible. “When I was a girl my grandfather conducted beekeeping as a hobby, as a hobby,” she explained decidedly. “Anyway, I wanted you to have a jar. It always used to make me happy when I was down.”

I suppose I looked ungrateful as I turned and tipped the mason jar around just to watch the bee treasure move slowly up and down the interior. “Well, thanks-I guess,” I quipped. I saw in the interior of the recesses of her mind that Carolyn was disappointed, although she wouldn’t outwardly show it. “This whole thing, my friend-it’s not a game. I’ve seen people face what they need to face because they have no other choice. I don’t like it and neither do you. I think it’s time for you to think of leaving something behind.”

I deeply regressed into the cobwebs of my brain to ponder what she meant. She was looking to me for some revelation, as if she would get some brownie points from St. Peter for helping her fellow man. And here I was with nothing to say, not because she was wrong, but because there was too much to say. And when there is too much to say no one can put that into words.

Gripping with all my might, I carried the mason jar of honey like Atlas carries the world, all in my two hands, these two hands that most every other human had. These hands-that can comfort a friend by touching the shoulder, these hands-that can build a house unassisted, and, these hands-that held lightly, for once, the peanut buttered slice of toasted bread, that somehow, someway, brought the once clumsy feathered friend down from the rafters of the yellow and red. There they were, the tiny feet stepping slightly onto the sticky surface with such joy. And to leave behind a treasure trove of peanut butter blueprints of a sparrow playground was all I could think of at the moment, but there was still time.

Among the barking towers of dulling stretches of wood, he had come from the dirt. A tiny spawn pretending to be large expressed to the world his wings of unmenacing power. Then I knew what my forest brethren knew. As one of the whole I did my part by creating the collective life. And that is exactly what we’re for.