Departure.

“Nothing really dies,” I told him. “It just turns into something else. Everything is always changing form. Do you remember the pumpkin that rotted into the earth in your garden? Tomatoes sprouted where it used to be. This bird will go back to the earth and turn into lavender flowers and butterflies.”
~ Anne Cushing in 'Best Buddhist Writing 2006'


We had some serious winds, and actually some blizzards this past week. And this weather took the Old Leaf with it. I miss it hanging precariously from its tiny branch. New buds have begun to form in its place. There are leaves scattered throughout the yard, so there's no telling which one could be this Old Leaf. Part of me wishes I had it, so I could save it as a memento of this beginning of 2009, marked with the deaths of my grandmother, my friend and this past week, my husband's Great Uncle Bud. But then that is really part of it. You can't keep the the thing you lost, only your memory of it and the imprint of how it touched you. You are not able to hold on, you have to let go.

That's what I love about gardening. Everyday there is evidence of impermanence. Something blooms, something fades away. The cycle of life and death happening over and over again, teaching us acceptance of this inevitability. The thing that is will not be forever. The thing that dies is never really gone, it merely changes forms. Life goes on.