Death, Part one

Try and run from it and you will only die tired, no one makes it out of life alive. I have had many experiences with death, but my first one was the most profound. My Grandmother taught me two of the most important lessons of my life, one was how to cast a circle and the other was how to die.

An avid smoker, she was diagnosed with lung cancer when I was still quite young. we had the kind of iconic relationship a boy is supposed to have with his Gramma, and I watched as she waned away. Until one day, she called me onto her lap and announced that we were going to read a story. Like most kids (and adults) I gauged the thickness of it with my calibrated eye, Space Ghost would be on soon and I could feel what was coming.

The Story was about a leaf, it started out with him on his branch, with his friends. It slowly went through the seasons. The birth of spring, the celebration of summer...and autumn. Fall. I was not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I knew where this was going. The last few pages of that book is still stained with tears.

Gramma said "we are all just leaves, on the tree of life. We're here to feel the warmth of the sun, enjoy the rain, cast a little shade and sway in the breeze..."

"...I will die very soon, but I will never leave you. Every time you see a leaf fall well thats me saying hello... I bet you can't catch me..."

So every fall, right around Samhain I go out under the tree and wait. I wait for her to come and say hi. I wait for that leaf to fall and I try to catch it before it touches the ground. She always manages to make me dive after it. She was like that. It is our game, our time. And when the wind blows the leaves into those little whirlwinds, we dance.