“Everything beautiful has its moment and then passes away.”

— Luis Cernuda

Autumn is in the air.  It is the season of beauty and of dying.  Someday, when it is my turn to leave this earth, I hope to depart in an autumn fashion — colorful and vibrant until the very end and then quietly fluttering to the ground and dissolving back into all-that-is.

We don’t like to think of the fleeting nature of beauty — of existence — but it seems to be everywhere I turn this week.  There is no escaping it.  An elderly neighbor left behind her beautiful life.  A friend just passed the anniversary of her own loss of beauty in the death of her child.  Another friend is remembering the mother who first showed her beauty and now is beautiful only in the memories of times past.  When the time comes for beautiful things to pass away, we want to cling to them and preserve them and never let them go; but that is not the way life occurs.  All things physical must end.

What goes on is the spirit of beauty that expresses itself again and again through people and things that inhabit the world.  At the moment that each beautiful thing passes away, another thing of beauty is created to take its place.  People die, and babies are born.  Leaves fall, and seeds rest beneath the soil waiting for Spring.  Nothing beautiful ever really dies.  We carry the memories of beauty in our hearts; and it is those memories that respond to the birth of yet another beautiful thing.  Each fleeting glimpse of the creations of beauty’s spirit serves to remind us how vast and infinite beauty really is.  It touches our lives in so many fleeting ways that we never are without it.  All we need to do is open our eyes and see.

On my morning walk today, I ventured to the corner of the park where a recent storm toppled two large trees.  Workers have come and removed the branches and trunks, carrying away enough firewood to heat their homes for many days this winter.  All that remains are the stumps — one still standing straight in the ground, and one upended and sitting askew with its roots reaching upward where its branches used to be. I remembered the many Springs when I would watch leaf buds form on the branches of that tree until they no longer could contain their new growth and would burst open to reveal the fresh green color of rebirth.  ’I won’t see that again,’ I thought sadly.

Rain was beginning to fall as i neared the stump.  I walked right up to the hole that once had held the roots and peered into it.  Empty.  That was all I could think or feel at that moment.  Empty.  Gone.  Finished.  The rain began to fall harder; and as I turned to walk for home and shelter, I spied something white near the base of the stump.  There, tangled in the roots of my dear missing tree, was a large chunk of beautiful white quartz.  It was as though the tree had held onto its beauty for so long that even in death, it would not release its grasp.  Now, as I stood in the rain and mourned the death of the tree, its roots seemed to extend a hand to me and offer up its last bit of treasure.  I found a helper stone — one with a sharp edge, and began to scrape away the soil that held the quartz in place.  It began to wiggle back and forth; and I thought of my children and the way they would work at loosening a baby tooth to make room for the permanent one that needed the space.  After a bit more scraping and a lot more wiggling, I found myself holding the tree’s treasure.  Out of its dead roots another moment of beauty had fallen into my hand.  I turned toward home, extending my open hand and letting the rain reveal more and more of the beautiful quartz.  I will miss my tree, but I will cherish its gift that reminds me that beauty must go on.