Summer Mourning
Grain ready to be harvested.
Today I’m in mourning. I’m mourning the fresh fruit and vegetables, the dewy morning grass, the towering sunflowers. I’m mourning time alone and time spent with friends. I’m mourning sweet, summer wine and long, golden-lit evenings. I’m mourning summer’s loss.
Maybe it’s the weather…
Perhaps it’s the cool, dull weather making my heart ache – nine degrees Celsius and rainy. I’m neither productive nor focused. I’m all over the place, doing a little of this, a little of that, and nothing much of anything. I’ve left and returned to this piece of writing five times now, and writing this still feels like walking through deep mud.
Listen to me read this post:
Every year summer leaves.
What’s going on with me? Every year summer leaves. That’s just how it goes. It’s a short season in this part of the world. I should know that. I do know that, but today this knowledge isn’t helping me any.
Once-green leaves, now turned red.
I had a great summer. I suppose if it had been a miserable summer I might not be experiencing this mild agony now, this longing for something not yet departed but on the verge of leaving.
For almost half of this summer I traveled and during those travels I visited in the most satisfying way with friends and family. I saw some old friends and through those experiences, felt like I’d made some new ones. When I wasn’t traveling, I was at home nurturing my garden, nurturing my writing, and nurturing myself.
Sweet summer, bitter fall.
This summer, I think I may’ve become too attached to the season itself, and allowed myself to get too used to the colour green spread out beneath cobalt blue. I forgot to build my immunity to falling leaves and falling temperatures. I forgot about the deep, white world that will cover the very spot where the sweet peas are blooming now and where the raspberries already have had the good sense to start dying. Today, I am remembering all these eventualities for which I am sadly ill prepared.
Orange sunflowers in autumn.
If I can let go, though, and wave a fond farewell to summer, maybe then I’ll remember the sweetness of autumn: the comfort of routine, the orange of pumpkins and of mountain ash leaves, the soft yellow of harvested fields. I may even consider the white wrap of winter surrounding my cozy house, giving me permission to hibernate on a Saturday morning. Slowly, slowly spring will come again and thaw the frozen earth, the same earth into which I’ll drop the sweet pea seeds that soaked overnight in a bowl on the kitchen counter.
But today, in the rain and alone with my thoughts, I don’t want to let go.
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Lori Knutson 