Automn

Alzheimer: Do Ghosts Cry? | home

Automn

Hanna is a caretaker who has survived the worst form of AZ, the Lewy Body Dementia of her mother.

Not only survived being a caretaker for her Mother, but came out a better, stronger and even more loving human being.

Here, she kindly offered us this text:

Hannah gives us hope

…and I thanked God for Autumn

I felt Autumn.

At first I can’t see it, but everybody feels it. People stop to chat on the street and say, “Well it really feels like Autumn today.” And they always look up to the sky when we say that, as if Autumn can be seen looming on the horizon like a shower of rain. It’s not about a change in temperature, it’s about a crisp edge to the air…a tartness…an expectation…that is somehow energizing.

Then the full Moon of September appeared.

I was walking by my bedroom window one evening and I almost gasped! The Moon looked enormous…like she was hovering over my own garden. It was a dark golden colour. Swollen full of honey. I could clearly see the Moon’s face as she proudly displayed all her glory and waited for the applause in my heart to quiet.

Suddenly one morning, Autumn painted the trees.

Like one big canvas of paint splashed around by the fae. Leaves in gold, red, brown, green, late wildflowers in yellow and purple, pheasants calling to each other. It was so much color I had to close my eyes for a minute. Even behind my eyelids, I could see that colour play.

This morning I LISTENED to leaves.

I was walking our puppies and got to this long row of big poplars right by the road... It was lightly frosty outside so I suppose that made everything a bit stiffer, and then it was absolutely still too. As I am walking I hear this 'tap, tap, tap' sound. So I stop and listen and it is the leaves! I can HEAR them tapping through the branches as they fall and then a 'tap' as they hit the ground. It was so amazing I just stood there and listened for about 5 minutes.

The leaves make it official

Two days after I listened to the leaves, they are still falling. Faster now. Bare branches are streaked on the sky alongside the gold leaves. And the ones that have fallen are a crunchy carpet that brings out the warm smell of Autumn. I stand in the leaves and close my eyes and breathe. The smell is brown and spicy and soft. Later it will turn dusty…but not today. Today the smell is sweet and damp and new.

The October Moon takes a bow.

Not at all like September’s moon. Loveliness of a different kind. This Moon is large too, but farther away. Higher in the heavens so she can see all of Autumn. And the honey colour has been replaced by a soft pearlescent white. She still smiles. And I smile back.

~Hannah Balaban

October, 2008