Autumn

 C.S. Lewis once said about autumn:

"Autumn is really the best of the seasons; and I'm not sure that old age isn't the best part of life. But of course, like autumn, it doesn't last."

It's autumn now. It's simply been a part of a repeating cycle of the changing season in the past, but it's different this year. I'm much more aware of the impending winter. The pandemic has been a factor, but I'd have to say that the passing of my mother a few weeks ago has been the catalyst for the season I'm currently experiencing. 

The relationship I had with my mother was complex, enough so that I elected to not to make any effort towards attending her funeral which was held a couple of time zones away. My previous blog post was an attempt to create some sort of statement I could use as my attempt towards a eulogy without touching on any of the issues that came out of the relationship I had (or didn't have) with my mother. I'm not going to get into any details of that here, except to say that I did grieve the loss of any chance to achieve whatever closure might have been possible had there been a chance for meaningful communication. But that grieving process began a long time ago when my mother began to display symptoms of Parkinson's as well as dementia. But there was still an infinitely small chance for that closure as long as my mother was alive and now it's gone. 

Other than my monthly session with my mentor, I really haven't done any in-depth digging/analysis of what the actual loss is that I'm still grieving. I guess some of it will happen as I compose this. But it's not necessarily going to expressed within this post. 

My birthday was yesterday. In years past I've scheduled a number of meal/dance outings that took up the better part of a week. This year, I had one meal with a friend with whom I'd only recently renewed our friendship that had otherwise been dormant for several decades and he'd gotten married and moved to Taiwan. The pandemic was a factor, but I also seem to be fighting a sinus infection that wants to become full-blown so I've slept a lot more than I normally do, and rather than go out, I've read a lot as many of my favorite authors have all had new novels come out in the last four weeks or so.

Two of those authors are crime fiction novelists Ian Rankin & Michael Connelly, who both have written a detective series featuring the career of a detective over decades and whose main characters have reached retirement age but have still found ways to be involved in police investigations. It turns out that these last novels end in ways that suggest that the next novel will be the last for each character. Even literary characters are dying. And it's not just these two literary characters. I also was a big fan of Jack Higgins, who penned a series of novels featuring a former IRA hitman turned government operative named Sean Dillon. The last Sean Dillon novel was written in 2017, and I've patiently waited for the next novel. That novel isn't coming; I discovered Higgins died earlier this year. And I find myself mourning the passing of these imaginary literary characters much more deeply than I did the passing of my mother. And it's their passing that makes me more aware of my own impending mortality.