Autumn - brief encounters with dying-- part II

Mr Buffard,and his late wife had spend all their life togather,
had a special group of friends circle,
frequented the idea of how the order of things ought to be - and how things ought not to be.

Most of the time they maintained a sort of classification of codes and conducts, and Nadine grew up in those set patterns that formed her into quite a psycho- rigid person.
She had a very keen sense of pragmatism.
However, one thing she missed was-- the same things as her parents, ' how to express her sentiments '!

Very often she was barked at by her father , which was his way of letting her know - he cared! She barked at her friends and she snapped at life. She hated people who moaned and groaned about petty little things. She 'd say " Whack the hell out of yourself and face it!!"

When her mother died, that was it §
-- there was nothing more nor nothing less.
You just had to " Whack the hell out of you and face it.
One had to know her sufficiently enough to understand her attitudes .

Now, that her father was dying, meant losing both her parents in an year's interval . It was too much, the pressure and stress was welling up, her close friend Danielle was constantly arround her like her shadow.
The two spinsters were inseperable,
belonging to the same category of people whose life was guide by facts and square perspectives.

Nadine cooked well , she was a blend of a fine sense of hospitality and very nosy host who had'nt the slightest scrupples when she'd set forward to exploring the intimate lives of people , friends and relationships.....just as her parents.

One day, arround mid-september, a friend arrived from India to spend a little more than a month's vacation in France. The weather was still beautiful, the countryside vineyards were glowing with the colours of early autumn.

Myfriend taught literature at college and loved painting, we spoke of our representations of colours, the subtle hues perceptible when one knew how to be witnesses to them etc, etc...

And, i began to describe to him how Autumn had upset my theories of ' yellow'.
Yellow to me was the radiance of life.
But, Autumn taught me - it as the dying part of green.
Well , even in the lands where i came from , the leaves turned from green to yellow before they fell.
But, it never captivated me as much as it did now, before the sharp contrasts of Autumn .


Trees were set aflame with brilliant colours of red , bright yellow, orange reminding of the warm summer.

i could see in every yellow leaf ; a buddha ;
radiant;
ready to detach and fall ;
to decay or get carried away by the winds into nothingness.

How beautiful and graceful it was, this falling.

So insignificant ,
almost unnoticed.

a leaf detached and fell,
slowly spiraling to the ground, i felt a solitude arround it as it fell,
yet, i could'nt ignore a silent celebration .

A goodbye in whispers ,
inaudible;
but not sad.

That leaf, as it fell , it fell in my own heart.

That goodbye i heard , in my the spaces of a silence where ears awaited listening.

I became so full in this falling, that for the first time i saw the peaceful smile of dying. Saying, that everything was okay.

i realised within myself, how a leaf says goodbye to its tree. Was there a drop of sorrow in its heart ?
so complete it was -in its falling, that i did'nt want any answers.

What was to be understood , was understood in an instant ;
the understanding itself, became the blossoming of peace.

i heard that things got worse , Monsieur Buffard had very little time left,
My friend from India and i went to see him at the hospital,
we knocked at the door and entered.
The morphine left him sluggish.

i had seen his face before , pale and yellow,
and if there was any fear he did'nt show it. And he still did'nt show it now.

We smiled,
and he smiled back, greeting silently. i laid on his table the chocolate cakes, he thankfully accepted.
He tried to sit upright in his bed.
He asked me for his set of pencils and drawing sheets.
he wanted to sketch a portrait of my friend . But, the very gesture of holding his pencil exhausted him,
he mumbled excuses.
i said to him it was okay, what he needed was to take rest.
we looked at each other, it was a bit windy outside.
we spoke of the now spreading colors of autumn.

i saw the leaves from his tree- falling, not a word was being said, but we both could see how they fell.

Three days later i learnt that he died.

That evening i layed in bed recalling the lines translated by Bruce Lee, the lines of the ancient chinese poet Tzu Yeh:

Young man,
seize every moment of your time.
the days fly by,
before long you too shall grow old.

If you believe me not,
look there in the courtyard;
how the frost glitters white ,cold and cruel
on the grass that once was green.

Do you not see
that you and i are as the branches of one tree .
With your rejoicing comes my laughter;
With your sadness starts my tears.
Love,
Could life be otherwise with you and me?

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