FALLING LEAVES

FALLING LEAVES

KENNETH E HALL         8 May, 2016     Houston

Our journey through life is one that continuously conducts us forward in time and place —

for that, as far as we are able to tell, is the very nature of time:

Time cannot be halted, or coaxed to stay however briefly. It keeps on moving.

Time cannot be rushed, and it pays no heed whatsoever to our own haste.

Time cannot be coaxed or bribed to go back — to return to any point in its past.

It is a constant, in a universe where everything else is fluid and ever-changing.

As we travel our own paths through time, there is a wind that blows in our faces, and sweeps away whatever we experience, see, do, or say almost the instant we have done it. It blows our life away as an autumn wind whisks away falling leaves from the trees. The leaves that for so long clutched with tenacity onto the branches of mighty trees, and drew their nourishment from those arbors, now, at last, release their grasp from those very branches and let themselves fall free.  

Yes, the leaves drift downward, to be blown away by the gusts into the oblivion that is the past, to return nevermore to the place where they soaked up the warming light of their first morning sun.

This is as it should be. This is the way of the world.

The leaves whirl above our heads, spiraling in rustling eddies, and then they quickly settle to earth, as we trudge ever-onward in our journey. Here and there, a leaf or two may fall upon us, or we may grasp a single falling one in our hand, and examine it, as if it were different from all other of the tens of thousands of leaves that are falling, are or yet to fall in our path.

One day, we find an old box in the recesses of a rarely-used closet, and, in curiosity, open the box. To our delight and surprise, it contains some old photographs, souvenirs, and letters. These things, too, are as fallen leaves - tiny lost pieces of our lives, and of the lives of our loved ones. We hold a picture or letter in our hand and examine it, as if it were different from all other of the tens of thousands of photographs and letters that exist or will exist in our lifetime.

We cherish each object, because of what these things represent. They take us through the mists of time to one specific, nearly-forgotten hour of a nearly-forgotten day that we lived so long ago. Looking at them reminds us of who we were, where we were, and what were doing then, as well as bringing to mind good times that came and went all to quickly — in truth, in the blink of an eye.

Then, the time comes for us to move on, and so we close the box, and that moment, too, is gone. We continue on our journey into our future, as the falling leaves of the past keep drifting by all around us, and now, seeing them fall, we smile.