Educated by These Autumnal Colours

Recently, I have been struggling not with the idea of death but the viewing of it. In the last year, death had become a very prominent factor in the lives of the people around me. I often did not know what to say when my loved ones confided in me their feelings of loss. One day in confused efforts to lighten up the mood, someone asked me to bring their loved one back to life. 

This broke my heart. I wanted so much to say that I could and would. But I could do nothing. Instead I drew this:

I desperately wanted to capture life and death in the same moment, to somehow bring life back to death. It was even hard to draw. I never finished this drawing but I was reminded of it in class when someone referenced Thoreau's Autumnal Tints.The last thing I drew was a dead leaf even though it wasn't full of life like I intended the plants growing around the skull to be.  

In Autumnal Tints Thoreau says that fallen leaves "teach us how to die." I never thought of Autumn leaves in this way. I only knew them as a celebratory change that we look forward to. I realised though that what we are actually celebrating, maybe without even realising it, is death. I wondered why, in this American culture, we do not approach the death of our loved ones the way we approach the death of leaves. 

In some cultures, like Mexican cultures, death and the dead are celebrated and honoured- just as the leaves are when Autumn sets in. I always want to say to people mourning over death that the loss of their loved one is part of the circle of life, that their death will allow the grass to grow and the cows to eat, but that is not what everyone wants to hear. People want to hear that the person will come back and although I wish I could tell them that they will, I know that if the leaves did not fall from a tree, the tree would die. 

And maybe that's enough reason to celebrate.