As a kid, I loved fall. LOVED it. The smell of wood smoke from our stove, the first crispiness in the air after a long, stultifying summer, and all of those leaves! My Aunt Cleo, who lived across the street from us, had two gigantic trees on her front lawn. In the summer they were excellent climbing trees -- I had a particular technique to get into the one that didn't have a low branch -- but it was when their leaves started to change and pepper her lawn that I really appreciated them. There was usually a two or three day window after they fell but before she could arrange to have them hauled off that I lived for. I would go over after school with a rake ("But I'm helpinggggg...") and make the biggest pile I could. This part required some effort, but launching myself into the pile and watching all those crunchy, itchy leaves swirl around me as I lay there, planning my next jump, made it soooo worth it. If I was really lucky, I would get a friend who could help with the raking, and my pile would get totally huge. Best. Time. Ever.
Then there was my birthday, right in the middle of October. I had more than one birthday party that included a mom-sponsored spook alley in our basement or in the trees at the end of my Uncle Vaughn's field by the canal. My mom usually had a theme, and she and my aunt would dress up to support it -- the hobo party when I turned eight was my particular fave -- the invitations often asked my friends to dress up too, so it was like Halloween a couple of weeks early every year. Of course, every sleepover I ever had was ruined by the deer hunt, but I digress.
And Halloween! A dress-up carnival at the school, trick-or-treating in the dark with my friends and all the candy you could eat -- as a polite nod to safety, less the homeade caramel apples that inevitably turned up in my pillowcase. November was the long countdown to Thanksgiving; a holiday my mom loved only second to Christmas. She would plan it for days -- my dad was in charge of the turkey, but everything else was hers. It was the one time every year when she called everyone home. I loved it because it felt like family. We would spend the morning making everything from mashed potatoes and rolls to her specialty punch made with Kool-Aid and lemon juice. It was my brother's job to carve the turkey, my job to set the table with the extra-fancy dishes, and we all considered it our responsibility to liberate as many olives and pickles from the relish tray as we could until my mom noticed. Dinner was in the afternoon, followed by naps and walks, and, in the evening, leftovers. Turkey sandwiches and pie.
Yup, autumn was where it was at. Until eight years ago when it broke my heart.
Eight years ago on the afternoon of Halloween, I got a call from my sister with the news that my mom was in the hospital in Delta, Colorado with what appeared to be a stroke. We had spent the summer watching her slip further and further away from us into the grip of the Alzheimer's she had been diagnosed with in the spring; even though we knew what it was and what it did, her decline seemed awfully fast. My birthday call that year had been a five-minute conversation, mostly with my dad, because my mom's speech was all mixed up and she was frustrated and sad. A stroke on top of everything else didn't seem fair. I was being summoned, and I knew it. I had three little kids to see through Halloween and I was five weeks away from delivering my fourth, but as soon as they were in bed that night, I went.
What followed was a very long week of tests and decisions that changed everything. It wasn't a stroke, it was cancer. And not just any cancer, but an aggressive form of brain cancer. CAT scans that had been taken in the spring were clear, but scans taken that week showed a tumor that had tunneled through a quarter of her brain. That meant there were pretty much no options. And I don't think she wanted any. Even though she couldn't say what she meant, she made it very clear that this was it, and that was okay.
My mom died on the 20th of November, two days before Thanksgiving.
My dad spent three years without her, his health declining rapidly after her death. Every time I saw him, he seemed a little weaker. For the last two years of his life, he rarely left his house. If anyone died of loneliness, I think it was my dad. He finally let go on October 1, 2010.
The fall after my mom's death was a grim celebration of anniversaries for me -- the day I went to Colorado, the day I had to say goodbye, the day she died, the day of her funeral. The same thing happened the year after my dad died. I couldn't feel any of the anticipation I wanted to for autumn; it had all become too sad. Instead of looking forward to wrapping up with a blanket in front of a fire or watching the leaves swirl behind me as I drove through them, I dreaded watching summer die by inches because I knew the cold and dark were coming. I missed my mom more than I ever thought I could; all of the things that had brought her joy were suddenly intensely painful for me to remember. And I was angry. I had only begun to realize what it meant to host an elaborate birthday party in costume that an 8-year-old would never forget. I had never cooked an entire Thanksgiving dinner on my own. I had missed my chance to thank her, really thank her, from the perspective of someone who has been there. And she didn't get the chance to see me become the mother she hoped I'd be. Fall had turned on me, and I hated it.
Over the past eight years, the pain has receded and changed into something less pointed. With time has come a new understanding of just who I am and how who I was still fits. It's still bitterly unfair that my kids will never know my parents, and there are times that the pain of losing them hits me so hard it takes my breath away, but now I know I can come through it still standing. I've become more practiced at accepting what is and letting go of what I wish was. And when I sit on my porch at night looking at the stars, or stand by my parents' grave and tell my mom "thank you" as another mother who's come through it, I know she hears me.
As I've come to terms with grief, I've made my peace with autumn. The reminders of who I'm missing are still there, but I'm finally seeing the faint echoes of long-ago birthday parties and family dinners resurfacing through the dark. Every year they're brighter; the pull to feel joy in cool air and the sense of rightness of a world filled with woodsmoke and orange is like an old friend I haven't seen for too long. It's funny, but in a way, I feel like I've recovered something I lost when my mom died -- some part of my history that makes me whole. That's a lot of emotion to lay at the door of a natural phenomenon, but I feel like accepting the season that gave me so much as a child and took so much from me as an adult gives me a more complete sense who I am. Plus, fall is really pretty. And there's still nothing quite like a pile of leaves.
