James Hallenbeck, M.D.: Fallen Leaves

I thought readers might be interested in the following reflection, which I offered at this year's annual KARA convention in the Spring. KARA is a wonderful grief support group in the Bay Area, with roots going back to 1976 (within one year of the first hospices in America). Our VA hospice program has worked closely and collaboratively with KARA for many years. They have been of special help in offering support to bereaved children. Link to KARA website

I think back to a KARA conference some years ago. The presentations were moving, leading me to a deeper contemplation. When a break came, I took a stroll in the hotel garden. The sky was bright blue and the flowers so fresh. A small stream ran through the perfectly manicured grounds. I thought back to a talk I had read by the Thai Buddhist teacher, Ajaan Chah. In it he commented that in nature life and death exist in balance. In the forest our eyes may be drawn to the bud or the flower, but if we pay attention we also see the withered leaf on the stem. The forest floor is littered with last year’s glory and it is here that new life finds its soil. The process of birth is not separate from dying. Joy, not separate from sorrow.

The hotel garden, through which I walked that day was beautiful, but it was also incomplete. Swept away were the dead leaves and the dirt. The soil lay hidden under a finely cropped lawn.

It is, I suppose, our nature to be drawn to the beautiful, to the young. Our gardens reflect this selective vision. But somewhere, we are ill at ease. Like an itch we cannot quite scratch, we sense imbalance.

How like our human world. We rejoice, rightly, at birth. We celebrate when people come together in love and cheer their common dream. And yet somewhere, we know. We know that however wonderful, this flowering too cannot exist separate from inevitable decline. In speaking of the cycles of the moon, Carl Jung said, “Waxing and waning make one curve.” One curve, not two.

Ajaan Chah wrote, “Sometimes, when a fruit tree is in bloom, a breeze stirs and scatters blossoms to the ground. Some buds remain and grow into a small green fruit. A wind blows and some of them, too, fall! Still others may become fruit or nearly ripe, or some even fully ripe, before they fall. And so it is with people. Like flowers and fruit in the wind they, too, fall in different stages of life. Some people die while still in the womb, others within only a few days after birth. Some people live for a few years then die, never having reached maturity. Men and women die in their youth. Still others reach a ripe old age before they die.”

Whether we like it or not, we too are part of this natural world, however much we tend our tidy gardens.

But we must beware the limits of metaphor. When flowers fade and leaves fall, I do not think the emerging blossoms grieve the loss. It is our human nature that the joy of birth and coming together is balanced by sadness when we part. The fallen leaf in the garden takes no offense, when raked out of sight. The old, the sick and the disabled, while certainly part of natural order of things are not fallen leaves. They should not swept up and hidden behind some garden shed. They suffer and we suffer and it is also part of our human nature that we reach out and care for them.

I think you get where I’m going with this. I do not know about you, but I am concerned. I’m concerned that in our building of a modern world preoccupied with youth, beauty, and power, we are neglecting an ancient wisdom of the forest. And we do so at our peril.

So it is good that we come together periodically in this way to reflect on our common humanity. This is in accordance with our nature. We celebrate and we laugh. We grieve and we cry. Hard though it may be at times, in a fuller circle, we find ourselves, more complete. In this we find some solace and some space for blossoms to bloom.

James Hallenbeck, M.D.

Fallen Leaves

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