Wistful Memories from Last Fall

I picked the last of the late summer blooms just before the first frost. Plump-cheeked dahlias and frilly, lace-cap hydrangeas. The late afternoon sun shone through them, amber and rose.

More perfect than an Instagram filter, but there wasn’t room for them on my desk. I had work that required my space and attention.

I traced the arching bracts of fennel flowers as my sister-in-law marshaled her courage to share news that she carried like a ticking brown-paper parcel.

My brother has had a heart attack.

The fennel flowers had lost their yellow brightness and drooped dramatically next to sprigs of lavender that retained their calm composure. I tried to catch their scent as I listened to the silence whispering its way under a deep, deep ocean.

“He’s in the hospital, he’s okay — conscious. He’s on medication and they’re doing tests and ... We’re waiting to hear what will happen next.”

My brother is five years older than me but now we’re both settled into our 60s, the age difference hardly matters.

Autumn has arrived. My beautiful bouquet has changed from decoration to meditation as the flowers fold in on themselves, conserving their energy.

I take my daily walk along the shore under heavy grey skies, fog blurring the horizon with the stone-grey sea.

I am one of a community of walkers my age who frequent the beach in the middle of the workday. Getting our steps in, having a think, letting the silver-muzzled family dog sniff the air. We nod to each other but we don’t chat.

We are the retired and semi-retired. We smile at families of sandpipers scurrying to and fro at the water’s edge like iron filings responding to a trickster magnet hidden beneath the sand. A quiet walk is our respite from the tide of daily demands, our responsibility for elderly parents and concern for adult children.

Thankfully my niece was in town when my brother took ill. The ambulance was called and arrived quickly.

We are at the midpoint between the equinox and the December solstice, halfway through autumn. The flowers in the vase fade imperceptibly moment by moment and my morning meditation measures the changes from day to day.

The petals of the dahlias recede making the sunset color of their centers seem more vibrant; declaring purpose even as all around them grows ragged.

My brother calls. He is home.

He looks worn and pale. His daughter sits next to him, only a slice of her visible in the camera’s frame. There is something that he is burning to say but he can’t harness the energy he needs for it. It’s okay, I think, I know what it is.

The architecture in the vase is shifting. The soft seeds of the grasses have hardened and look wily, ready to jump. Amazingly, one purple zinnia looks almost fresh-picked even though the dirt-brown head of the other is dangling at the end of a withered stem.

As the collection settles and falls away, one perfect green orb is revealed. A dahlia bud, doomed by hope and hiding in plain sight.

The terrible nearness of death isn’t new for my brother and me. Our younger brother died in an accident four decades ago. So much of what lives in our family is rooted in that long-ago beginning of a summer day.

We have grown from David’s dying. Like oak grows around a jagged knot of iron.

The red-gold glory of autumn is over and it’s time to fetch wood for the fire. What was fresh is now composting and transforming, seeds going to earth and secret sleep.

The lacy hydrangeas, hardy perennials that they are, have turned brittle and dry; Charles Dickens spinsters with rouge on their cheeks, dowdy but not yet dusty. I move them to a north-facing room where the ghostly spiders of the house will be pleased to weave homes in them, given time and privacy.

I’m glad there is still some use and comfort to be found in the husks of a soon-forgotten summer.

A year later, my brother has made an excellent recovery thanks to the medical care and cardio-recovery program made accessible by Britain’s National Health Service. ‘Socialized medicine’ may not be perfect, but it’s more affordable, equitable, and effective than most Americans comprehend.

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