Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love---that makes life and nature harmonize. The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one’s very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air…
George Eliot
I love the autumn---that melancholy season that suits memories so well.
Gustave Flaubert
Sometimes I think about the paradox in both my personality and in the autumn season. While autumn is absolutely my favorite season of the year, inevitably, there are times during the fall when I sometimes find myself feeling quite melancholy. Thoughts of past times tug at my heart sorrowfully. Times which I sometimes wish that I could re-live, because they were such intensely beautifully chaotic times…adventures with my husband as a couple, raising my beloved children, growing up with my parents and brothers, friendships grown and lost, my adventurous period of life as a ranger, and so much more. In addition, sadness pushes in with haunting thoughts making me miss those I love who are no longer with me.
Why is it that autumn evokes occasional melancholy? And not just in me… Poets and authors reference both the exquisite loveliness as well as the pensive melancholy of autumn. A natural glory so profound that it can bring one to tears yet evokes echoes of the past, tinged with grief at the passage of time and inevitable changes in life. Perhaps it’s seeing the leaves turn spectacular colors, just before they let go of their life-giving branches, they dance on the wind gracefully before drifting to the ground. Perhaps it’s seeing the yellow grasses of meadows and the dusting of snow on the mountains…all reminding that change is here and winter is coming, that season of darkness and stark beauty. Maybe it’s that the newly created summer memories are just that…memories. Past. Slipped away into the archives of our recollections and faded photos.
In some ways, it feels like autumn is a reminder that our temporal lives here on earth contain an elusive, passing beauty and joy despite the bleakness of winter periods in our lives. A reminder that, as absolutely breathtaking as nature can be as well as our lives can be now, we were made for a perfect eternity with God. So much more awaits us, more than we can even imagine in our most wonderful dreams.
So, today, I will thank God for the beautiful season of autumn in which nature reflects all her best. Yet I will also thank God for the periods of melancholy because they are reminders of love experienced here on earth and the sure knowledge that in heaven all will be even better than I can even imagine…
