A Fall Day: A Reflection on Death
Written November 2, 2016 Revised March 15, 2021
The leaves turn their prettiest color right before they leap from the security of their branches. It’s like a final note of goodbye as they cripple under the weight of combat boots. It’s odd, they are most beautiful when in their last moments of life. During the majority of their life they remain the same green, they conform. However, when faced with the inevitability of their fate they begin to change into a plethora of hues ranging from apricot to a summer sunset. Does this phenomenon occur with human life, as well? Is nature trying to teach us a lesson that we can’t quite focus on? Should we spend the majority of our lives exploring our potentials and become the most beautiful of colors, rather than wait for the last moments we have to experience such beauty? Sometimes I think I’m going crazy. Sometimes I think I’ll die young at my own hands. Will I look rosy and full of color before I go? Is depression and suicide not the black and greys we usually associate to the idea, but rather a rainbow of everything we’re going to miss out on? Will I look my most beautiful in my final moments?
What will I look like when I inevitably fall?
I believe nature can tell us a lot about ourselves. Nature has been alive much longer than the human race. Wisdom comes with time and nature has millions of years under its belt. Can you imagine if trees could talk? They would speak in the sweetest whispers, almost like a song. It’d be a harmless melody echoing through the wind, subtle but cold enough to flush your cheeks.
Perhaps the leaves are saying “don’t be sad for us.” The more I contemplate the importance of this phenomenon, I realize that I don’t think they’re going through some sort of discovery. This is a suicide note. It’s a final goodbye resonating in the beauty of what they once were. They are simply giving their best before they crash to the sidewalk in a fit of quiet restoration. Their goodbye is not the realization of their potential in their final moments, but rather a representation of how they want us to remember them when they are no longer here. They want to take their leap with fate knowing that they have instilled with us an ocean of colors, washing over the cones of our retinas as a solitary whisper that beauty is never forgotten. That beauty is not something seen, but it is felt as the sunset clinging to branches brands its contentment into our visual memory.
I think now is a time in which I should consider being more like the leaves. Except, I hope to leave a plethora of hues, not just in my time of death, but in my time of living. I would like to emanate that of a rainbow, leaving sunsets and childish chalk marks wherever I may go. I want to leave my notes in every encounter. I want my colors to burn their visual memories until every sliver of pain, resentment, and bitter recollections only exist in a pile of ashes and the only recollection left standing is a wild sunset of colors and promises of a soon-to-come beautiful morning — better yet, a fall day.
