I Watched the Leaves Fall: A Letter to Autumn on Healing

 

Dear Autumn,

You’re here again. The air changed overnight, and everyone started talking about sweaters and apples and how pretty the leaves are. People post pictures of orange trees and say how cozy everything feels. I remember when I thought the same thing.

Lately, you make the house feel bigger, like the rooms are stretching out and I’m smaller inside them. Sometimes I wake up and the kitchen feels too quiet, like something is waiting for me to notice it. I do the things I always do: put the kettle on, sweep crumbs off the table, make the bed, but the motion doesn’t fill anything. It’s just motion.

I used to like this time of year. I liked putting out the little pumpkins on the porch, lighting a candle that smells like cinnamon, saving jars of peach jam in the pantry. Those things made sense. Then something shifted. I don’t know when the shift started exactly. It was small at first: a phone call missed, a neighbor not stopping by anymore, the son coming home later each time until the visits stopped altogether. It was tiny things adding up until they felt like a weight.

People say loneliness like it’s one thing. It’s not. Sometimes it’s the quiet after everyone leaves, sometimes it’s the way folks stop asking if you need anything, sometimes it’s staring at the TV and not caring what’s on. It’s a dozen small things that add together until you can’t tell where one ends and the other starts.

The trees outside my window started turning color. They’d been green so long. Then, on one cold morning, the leaves looked tired, all at once. They began to drop. I sat with my tea and watched them fall, thinking about how the trees could let go like that. It seemed so simple to me then, let go and be done. I remember thinking, maybe that would be easier.

I don’t want to make this dramatic. I will say it plain: that year I tried to stop. I set it up the way you do things at home, methodical and quiet. I pictured it like closing a book. I did not expect how much shame would settle on me the next day when I woke up, and I was still here. It pressed down heavily, like damp leaves on a roof.

What happened after is not a miracle story. No one came through a door with bright lights and a choir. It was small things again. The neighbor came by one afternoon with a pie she had burned because she had trouble with the oven. My grandson left his jacket behind after a visit, and I found it on the chair, and it smelled like him, and I cried into it. The cat kept scratching at the back door at odd hours. Those stupid, ordinary things kept slipping in between the hard thoughts. I let the moments pile up, and the idea felt less real until it stopped being the only thing I noticed.

You would think trying to end things would make everything black and finished. For me, it made everything… more complicated. There was shame, yes, and a bigness of embarrassment I bit like a coin. There was also a stubborn smallness that kept me moving: making tea, washing a dish, folding a towel. I don’t know why that smallness mattered. It just did.

Now, when autumn comes, I watch the leaves fall, and I see the falling, and I also see the roots. The trees shed, and then they stand quiet all winter. I thought at one time that falling meant the end. Now I watch and I know falling can mean rest, can mean getting ready for something that comes back in time. That knowledge doesn’t make the hard days go away. It doesn’t make them polite. It just gives me a thought to hold.

I’m not cured. Some mornings it’s still hard to get out of bed. Some afternoons, I sit with a heaviness in my chest so deep I can’t name it. But I have learned small things that help me stay. I call a friend even when I don’t want to talk. I put a sweater by the chair so I will wrap it on cold evenings. I keep a little bowl of nuts on the table because I’ll munch on something instead of doing nothing at all. Those are not heroic moves. They are tiny, steady things.

When people call the month of September something important, they mean well. They hand out numbers and posts and slogans and say the right words. Do those things matter? Yes, sometimes. But what keeps me going more often is someone showing up with a burned pie or a jacket left behind or a cat making a nuisance of itself. It’s the ordinary interruptions that pile up and make the dark less present.

So I write this because the cold season makes me remember. I don’t want to be the kind of person who pretends everything is fine. I want the world to know that falling can be scary and real and still not be the same as ending. Leaves fall, and the tree isn’t over. People fall, and sometimes they get back up. Sometimes they don’t, and that is why the small things matter: the phone call, the knock, the pie.

If anyone reads this and thinks it sounds familiar, I am not telling you to do anything brave. I’m telling you what kept me: little acts that are not meant to save you in one big rush, but to keep a hand in the room. If autumn makes you remember something hard, let someone know. If you can’t say it out loud, leave your kettle boiling for a while and sit with it. It helps me. It might help someone else.

More: https://peonymagazine.com/special-edition/i-watched-the-leaves-fall-autumn/