'Cause nothin' lasts forever...

This is a sad month for me.

It's a sad time of year, actually. It doesn't really pick back up until after Christmas. I've found, through the years, that there isn't much I can do to alleviate the pain...Just ride it out through the waves.

It stormed yesterday - a slow brewing storm that started with a warm wind and sun, and very slowly deteriorated, but all the while, even when the day was nice, the rumbling thunder was in the distance, loud enough to remind me that there was, in fact, a very bitter storm headed my way. The clouds blew in, light at first, getting darker and darker, until the thunderhead was on top of me, looming. The wind turned cold, whipping the leaves off of the trees and swirling them through the air. When the rain came, it was cold, and small. Just angry clouds, spitting angry hard drops that turned into large splats are the rain grew angrier, eventually assaulting the ground with rivers of water, gurgling down the gutters and streets.

But this morning it's clear. Crisp and clear. A bright blue cloudless sky, with bright sunshine. The wind is still here, though. It's still punishing the yellow and orange leaves, dropping them to the ground. But today they don't fly. They don't whirlwind through the air, spinning and flipping, they just drop to the saturated ground, soggy and defeated. The leaves from yesterday all lay where they fell, too tired, cold and damp to raise up in the wind. The sky may not remember the storms, but I do.

And so it goes. The fall is really upon us. The windows are shut to keep out the cold, but it still seeps in. There was a time, a long while ago, that I loved the fall. I loved the crisp air, the crunch of the acorns, the sticky sweet smell of the decay of summer. Fall always seemed like a time for new beginnings, new opportunities. The old mmakes room for the spring new comers. But that seems like a long forgotten memory now. I can't really focus on what times then were like. It's like trying to look at my reflection through a fogged up mirror. I know it's there, because it's always been there before, but I can't see it - I don't know exactly where it is, or what it looks like.

But it won't be long now before the trees give up the last of their leaves and the icy rains turn into a slow falling graceful snow, that temporarily blankets what used to be. It will make our footsteps sink into the white, so even when we can't remember who we are, we can still see where we've been.