“Look back, but don’t stare,” my dear friend Barbara said to me. She was accompanying me in the long process of settling accounts with my past, cleaning up some of the mess I’d made of my life. The important thing, she told me, was to see and acknowledge where I had been wrong, to take any action that was called for, and then to let it go.
“It is the unhealthy tree that cannot shed its leaves,” she told me. I took the metaphor to heart.
But the truth is more complex. And even mysterious. At least for trees.
Certain hardwood trees, like beeches and oaks, hang on to their withered leaves through the winter, dropping them in spring. Scientists have named the process marcescence, from the Latin verb marcescere, meaning “to fade.” (I threw that last bit in for those of you who, like me, are nerds about words.)
But while they have a name for it, scientists don’t know why it happens. Maybe the leaves provide a fresh layer of mulch to nurture spring growth. Maybe the dead leaves provide some shelter for wintering birds. Maybe they protect new buds from browsing grazers, like deer. (Dry leaves taste nasty, or so they say. I can’t help wondering how they know.)
Marcescence isn’t a sign of ill health. It is just what some deciduous trees do. For reasons they keep to themselves.
When to let go. When to hang on.
How do they know.
It is the end of October. Here in the Northern Hemisphere, the days grow short. The darkness deepens and widens. Life draws inward. The Earth goes into hibernation with the bears.
We are entering what ancient Celts might call the “time between times,” which will not come to an end until the Winter Solstice on December 21 (or thereabouts) and the return of the sun.
It is a thin time, when the veil between the living and the dead becomes permeable.
Time to honor and/or reckon with those who’ve gone before us. Time to reflect on our own mortality. Time to listen to our hearts and dream into our hearts’ desires.
And while we’re listening, here is a closing word from theologian Howard Thurman:
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
