The Cycle of Life

Each fall the first tips of leaves at the top of the sugar
maple tree in my backyard catch my breath, always more brilliant than
other trees in the fall. I'm grateful that someone planted it there.
Instantly I'm transported to a feeling of fall and a reminder of the
continuing cycles in nature and in life.

On a brilliant October morning I take a walk through an urban
woods, grateful for the people with foresight who allow this patch of old
forest to stand, though encroached on every side by housing
developments, businesses, highways. Not far from a busy four-lane
highway, a huge old log is allowed to rot, supplying rich refreshment to
the undisturbed ground below: ants carry out the work. A squirrel lets me
get as close as three feet before scampering to the other side of a
tree. The squirrel's cheeks bulge with nuts for winter, I suppose.
Why can we accept the rhythms of life in nature, but have more
trouble with accepting the turning tables of aging? An irony hit me in
reading an article by a woman who was caring for her mother with
Alzheimer's. She wrote how, in the early stages of Alzheimer's, her
mother would frequently keep her up for hours every night, hunting for
something she had misplaced and refusing loudly to go back to bed until
she had found it. I'm sure that daughter kept her mother awake many
nights, too, as an infant. But how difficult for the situation to be
reversed.

My father is diabetic and of course shouldn't eat much candy.
He watches his diet and his weight very well (with Mom constantly looking
over his shoulder), but keeps a stash of M&M's for sweet cravings. This
summer while we were visiting them, he gave me an extra dollar one day
when I was running to the store for him: "Go across the street when
you're in town, to the dollar store where they have three packs of M&M's
for a dollar," he requested.

At the store, the clerk assumed I was getting the candy for my
children and said something about hoping the candies didn't melt in their
hands. "Actually these are for my father," I replied, recognizing again
how the tables had turned. (And I wanted to hug her for thinking I would
have children young enough to still be begging for candy.)
As teens we plead with our parents for the keys to the car, and
then we get to the place where we need to take the keys away from them.
Our parents cleaned up our messes when we had toileting accidents, and
then we get to the place where we have to clean up after our parents.
This should not be shameful: this should be as natural and as expected
as the tree in the forest returning to mulch and then to sod. Our
parents fed us as infants, and wiped our dribbled chins. We will probably
get to the place where we feed our parents, and wipe their chins. Happy
is she/he who can accept these cycles without undue mortification or
depression.

The writer of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament scriptures many
years ago wrote eloquently: "For everything there is a season, and a
time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted" (Ecclesiastes
3: 1-2).

The Creator somehow endowed the squirrel (or did he learn it
from his parents?) with the knowledge that the season of winter is
coming: you better tuck away some nuggets to carry you through the long,
chill days of winter. Later in Ecclesiastes we read the somewhat
foreboding reminder: "Remember your Creator in the days of your youth,
before the days of trouble come, and the years draw near when you will
say, 'I have no pleasure in them'" (Ecclesiastes 12:2). And here again
I'm grateful that someone had the foresight to warn me to treasure these
fleeting days, of October and life in general. My parents have prepared
me well for the later years, both by their example and their bringing me
up with an appreciation for my Creator and my place in the cycle of
life.

-- Another Way column by Melodie Davis.

From: jgat@mozcom.com