This year, let alone this beatiful season has flown by for me, and mercifully so at times. As some of you may remember, from my blog Black and White, I moved my parents in with us on the first of March this year.
Both of my parents are 82, my mother with crippling arthritis and my dad with kidney failure, one leg and all the rest that comes along with those conditions. By June a hospital stay caused dad to be too weak for us to properly take care of him safely at home and he went to stay in a nearby nursing facility.
My days were spent visiting, reassuring, feeling guilty and watching my dad wither away in front of me.
In May, my husband was sent to see a ENT specialist two hours from home for a mass that was showing up on an xray. He had nagging breathing problems since September of last year when he came down with Covid. In and out of the hospital a couple times with bronchitis and complaining of something stuck in his throat.
August found us at the James Center, stage 4 throat cancer with only 6 months to a year to live without surgery. On August 31st my loud boisterous beautiful husband lost voice. They removed his voicebox and all lyphnodes in his neck and forever changed his way of life and who he had thought himself to be.
By September, Dad had taken a turn for the worst and on the evening of the 29th, under the Hunters full moon, surrounded by family, my father took his last breath. Thirty-five years to the day that he had lost his own father and at the same age as his mother was when she passed. I like to think they came back and guided Daddy home.
Now Autumn is almost over, the rain is setting in and the trees are all but bare. Yet somehow I made my way outside to try to catch the beauty of fall before it too could slip through my hands.
I find such a comfort in nature, it heals me. It is constant, steady and alive in world of it’s own that sometimes we barely notice. It goes on inspite of us and all around us. The cycles of death and birth like nature goes on regardless of us, with a mind of it’s own. We cannot control it ourselves but if we can try to tune into it…breath into the completeness of it, there is a nurturing power and a steady comfort to be found. Everything and everyone only has a season before it passes away and a new one begins.
The end of November finds us busy with daily radiation treatments. Wrapping up six weeks of them just after Thanksgiving. There will be no big family get together this year as we usually do. No celebration, just quite graditude, reflection and thankfulness. None of us has the strength for it just now.
My days are spent now inadequately consoling my grieving mother. After 60 years together it is unbelievable to her that she will never in this lifetime see his face or hear his voice again. There are no words for loss….
And so, before its too late I wanted to share my pictures of this season and my heart, and to say Thank you for sharing this with me.
Before It’s Too Late, share yourself with the people you love, live fully and always try to keep something wonderful focused in your lens~
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