Just wandering....

Autumn takes me to many places in heart and mind.
I love these days of warm glows, rich tones, the coziness but

I am also filled with melancholy.

Why is it that the fall takes us so inward?

 

Is it the last waning days of frolicking in the outdoors, layered but able

to fling off the outer sweater as the mid day sun filters through the fog?

Knowing how soon the cloak of frost will greet us one morning, catching our breath

as we step out the door?

The falling leaves, a reminder of the fact that with life comes death.

 

My yoga teacher lost her mom within a week of a sudden illness.

She was young and seemingly healthy and then gripped by cancer severely and quickly.

Today when I wandered through the woods I thought of  that quickness.
My teacher talked about wanting to run from those deep and uncomfortable emotions
but how yoga has taught her to gather them close to the bone.
To sit with them.
To breathe.
And even though she couldn't physically do a yoga session in the weeks that
followed her moms death, she was still practicing.
Still a student.
Don't forget to breathe.
So, the same for me in that yoga is not just a physical practice but something that
carries me through the day, the years, the flights and stumbles.

I thought of my sisters brief time here.

The leaves that crumbled so easily under foot.

The decaying fungi that lasts for maybe a few days or a week at best.

And in our human world how 100 years can seem so long but 

for the majestic evergreens it is but a smidgen of time spent rooting into the earth.

Relativity.

Watching Griffin, I thought that in only a few years my beloved companion will be gone and how

short a time his lovely spirit has graced my world.
How much joy he has given me.
How many wonderful places we've been together.

The thing to keep in the forefront again is not how short the time

but how deep and meaningful that life has been.

How lovely and cruel life can be in all it's moments.

It's fragility can seem like a gentle breath on the wind.

It's severity, the loud crack of a branch, falling to the earth.

Grasp it all, gather it, rake it up, jump in and toss it overhead.
Give your heart a soft place to land.

Just like those leaves, whirling up in the blustery days of October,

moments will fly away...watch them closely.

Remember...
"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take,
But by the moments that take our breath away".
(anonymous)

 

(mom, Tracy, Danny, myself. Wilket Creek Park, Toronto 1973)