Autumn is my saddest season, especially this year

I hate fall. 

I live in a four-season country (four distinct seasons). Fall is the shortest season but it’s long enough. It’s long enough to make me sad. It’s long enough to fray my heart. It’s long enough to make me cry; sometimes great, gulping sobs that hurt me physically and wring the emotions and coherent thoughts from my mind; sometimes silent, steady tears that fall because my mind finds tangents and spins through them repeatedly before setting off on new ones.

The sadness sneaks up on me no matter how hard I try to brace for it and regardless of how I try and embrace it. I know to expect it, so you think I’d be better prepared but I’m not. 

I’ve tried to rationale it out; figure out why I feel like this. Some of my reasons are constant year after year and some are new to the mix. 

Fall, to me, signifies the season of death. The promise of spring and the life of summer turn into the death and closure of those seasons before turning into the hibernation of winter. While the leaves are beautiful, turning from green to gold, they shed from the trees and lay lifeless on the lawns and streets. The plants that I love and nurture, that bring me joy and make me smile are either going to sleep or ending their life cycle. Bareness is all that’s left as I empty my pots into my green bin, cut back the stalks, mulch and burlap the tender perennials that I hope will spring back to life next April. The fact they’re ready to be put to sleep for the season isn’t lost on me but I selfishly want their beauty to last a little longer. Fall ensures that it won’t, for now.

Mid-October especially brings on pangs of pain. My Dad died 21 years ago in mid-October. He was a man from a different generation than mine and, as a farmer who had never worked for anyone but himself, he could, at times, lack the skills needed to teach his 'employees' — i.e., his children — what to do and how to do it with patience. He was mercurial in temperament;  one moment jovial and loving, and the next lashing out with harsh words with barbs that embedded deep and still sting, many, many years later. 

His death — a quick passing from cancer — left more questions than answers. Over the years, I’ve tried to focus only on the good memories and let go of conversations held only in my mind with words that will never be spoken aloud. It’s not to ignore the negative but because I can’t change the past — good or bad — I’ve chosen to carry forward with me what brings my heart peace. 

This year, for some reason, add to the mix a sadness over My Favourite Husband and his last Halloween. Halloween wasn’t a holiday that got him excited. He would sit and look at the trick or treaters coming to the door in their creative costumes — and that’s as far as his participation went. Yet the last Halloween of his life, for some unknown reason, he went all out. He bought a ghost that he hung from a drainpipe that swayed in the wind and moaned if walked under. He purchased a DVD with ghostly images and a mini-projector that played those images across a window in our house. He helped me hand out candy and kept the porch light on a little longer to make sure any child who wanted candy got some. 

It was so much fun and it breaks me that this was the only year he did this. I want more, so many more. It’s not fair.

The other new source of my sadness is simply feeling alone. I’m surrounded by people who love me as much as I love them. I have a full and fairly busy life but, right now, for whatever reason, I ache to blend this life with another. I had briefly explored the world of dating and, while that attempt didn’t pan out for multiple reasons and the attempt is well in my rearview mirror, the solitude, the idea of companionship, is a dull, pulsing hurt. It isn’t always like this but right now, compounded with everything else the season brings, walking solo brings on the tears. Will I ever be loved again like I was loved before — fully, respectfully, with heart and mind? Will I ever experience a relationship where the effort to build, grow and nurture is mutual? And though I know better, the lack of romantic love, of that type of partnership, makes me feel unlovable.  Being with the wrong person is worse than being alone and I know this. But is there a right person out there? Is there another relationship in my life that combines the freedom of my life with the twinning of two lives? Is there potential for me to have a future that blends my past and present together as well as the past and present of a partner to create a future?

I am fully aware there are bigger, badder problems in the world and the sources of my sadness are minuscule in comparison. And I understand that I’m responsible for getting out of my funk and find my way forward to clearer, sunnier skies. 

But for now I will cry because that's what my heart is telling me I need to do.

❤️