Fall Remembrances

In my previous job back home, I had the pleasure – ever so briefly – of working with a woman named Linda. Linda was a boisterous, vibrant redhead with a remarkable lust for life. I can still vividly recall the morning at work when she came to me and told me she thought she had found a lump along her collar bone and asked if I would mind to check it out to see if I thought that's what it was, too. So, off to the privacy of the conference room we went, and a few seconds later, I concurred with her “self- diagnosis” and demanded that she call her doctor immediately for an appointment. That was in August of 1987 (or thereabouts) and the following March, Linda succumbed to an inoperable brain tumor. She was forty-seven.

I think of Linda now and again, but her memory always seems to worm its way into my thoughts when fall rolls around because Autumn was absolutely Linda's favorite time of year. Not me, I prefer spring when everything is bursting forth with new life, not fall…when we are treated to a few days of dazzling hues, followed by weeks upon seemingly never ending weeks of brown, gray, black ugliness that makes me want to crawl inside a closet and hibernate until the daisies start to bloom again.

But not our Linda. She always said that she wanted to go “hug a tree” when the leaves started to display their autumnal splendor. Linda was also a poet, so in her honor, I searched the Internet and found the following verse.

Pumpkins in the cornfields
Gold among the brown
Leaves of rust and scarlet
Trembling slowly down
Birds that travel southward
Lovely time to play
Nothing is as pleasant
As an autumn day!

(My apologies. I searched and searched, but could not find the name of the author, so I am unable to give proper credit.)

The following colorful array is for you, Linda. If I know you, you’re hugging a tree right now. Miss you, my friend.

Photo courtesy of Google. Got this in an email today, so have no clue who gets the credit, but thank you.