Drooping Daisies

 My birthday bouquet is impermanent. It's aging into pieces. 

The gerbera daisies drooped on the third day, as they do predictably. So i cut the stems short and floated the flowers in a bowl of water, where they seem to be happy. I am certainly happy looking at them.

Old daisies. Old me.

Blue Sky

We are on vacation in the Caribbean, expecting sunshine every day. Yet a few days have been overcast with sprinkles or easy tropical rain. By afternoon, the clouds clear and the sun is shining in the blue sky again.

The Blue Sky vine (Thunbergia) is a lovely familiar tropical vine whose periwinkle flowers drop on the ground.

Rain falls. Flowers fall. It's all impermanent. Things change. The weather changes. Flowers change. Yesterday the blue vine flowers were fresh and lovely. Today they are old and brown.

I'm enjoying the blue sky here in the Caribbean.

The Middle-Aged Garden

One friend says she goes out to her garden every morning and deadheads. I take my garden cart and cut back the foliage of plants that have finished blooming. Now, in the middle of the season, plants are tall; they are middle-aged plants. Soon i have a cart full of dead bodies, which i haul to the compost pile.

Rupa dancing her way out of her living memorial service, cane in hand

Some friends die young. Rupa, a 75-year-old friend died 2 weeks ago. She was so vivacious and full of life. Yet i heard her say last winter that she was ready to go. I'm the one who wasn't ready for her to go.

Here's the chant i learned especially for Rupa's living memorial service 3 months ago--a memorial service that she attended and danced her way out of.

All things are impermanent.

They arise and they pass away.

To live in harmony with this truth

brings great happiness.

Flowers arising and passing.
Friends arising and passing away.

All Snow is Impermanent

Raking Around the Snow

Big piles of snowplowed snow are disappearing fast--evaporating from the top and melting on the bottom. This means the ground is rather soggy. Squish, squish, squish. Add in yesterday's April showers, and i am surrounded by various forms of water--in the air, on the ground in puddles, and in the ground as mud. Fortunately, there's more air than water, so i can breathe comfortably. (And my west Texas dry skin has softened considerably now that i'm home in the North Country; my lips are no longer chapped.)    

                     

All things are impermanent. I've been learning this chant, and applying it to many events in my life. All snow is impermanent. All mud puddles are impermanent. All the gold fish in my pond are impermanent--20 of them have disappeared, leaving only one. All lives are impermanent. All bodies are impermanent. I hum this chant throughout the day. 

All things are impermanent, including me.

All Lives are Impermanent

Well, spring arrived a week ago, so to celebrate the season, i defrocked the Christmas wreath on the front door and sent the wreath itself to the compost pile. I'll find its "skeleton" in a couple of years--the thin steel metal ring with a slinky spiral of green wire wrapped around and around and around and....

The wreath still looked mostly fir-green, though the yew sprigs were more yellow than green, and the spruce sprigs were turning brown. This is how old age looks on us--a bit paler and frailer than we used to be. Not quite as "much" of us as there used to be.

Friday evening, i attended a Living Memorial service for a friend who is dying. She was the mother of our local Interfaith Initiative, and a representative from each of her favorite traditions spoke, chanted, or danced. A Sufi whirling dervish, the Jewish cantor with a spectacular voice, a pan-eurhythmy dance celebrating sunset, and i offered a Buddhist chant.

All things are impermanent.

They arise, and they pass away.

To live in harmony with this truth

brings great happiness.

The season of my interfaith friend's life is passing away.
And so is mine.

Memorial Day

Walker Farm

It's plant-buying weekend. The parking lot at our local farmstand is so crammed that a sheriff's deputy stands in the middle of the road as a warning for traffic to slow down.

People used to buy plants to decorate the graves of loved ones. When i grew up, this holiday was called Decoration Day. But when all the secular
holidays moved to Monday in 1971, the name Memorial Day prevailed. Or, as one friend said, Happy Death Day.

This weekend we buy beautiful pots of flowers and 6-packs of seedlings, thinking of the flowering, fruitful life ahead.

Flowers and vegetables are impermanent, and they are a beautiful, subtle reminder of our own life span.

Birthday Bouquets

My sweetie gave me a birthday party this past weekend. I had requested "No Gifts Please," so some people brought me flowers. Flowers delight the eye and the heart and make me smile as i pass by the bouquet on the kitchen table, on the dining table, on the coffee table.

My birthday flowers are beautiful. And they are impermanent.

My sweetie's birthday bouquet of 4 weeks ago has browned and withered (sort of like me), but retains sufficient beauty and interest that he is still keeping it in his music studio. I even borrowed the eucalyptus from it to add to one of my bouquets.

In a few days, i will toss away the bouquet. And as our own beauty fades, what then?

Memorials

Hospice had its annual Memorial Service yesterday at the Memorial Garden at Living Memorial Park.

Oh, there are so many to remember. The Living Memorial Park was created after World War II and dedicated to those who died in that war. The Hospice Memorial Garden is dedicated to those who have died during Hospice's 30-year history, including, this year, its co-founder, Pam Mayer.

The Memorial Service is dedicated to those who have died this past year in particular and any others whose names you would like to add to the list. Lerna played the dulcimer as people planted flowers in the garden and marked them with miniature "tombstones"--flat rocks as big as your palm with the name written in permanent marker.

Of course, nothing is permanent. Life is IMpermanent, changing from moment to moment, if we could but notice it.

"We remember them"--the deceased. Then we forget them--for minutes, hours, or days. Then we remember them again and re-feel our grief, our sadness at the ceasing of the deceased.

Yet everything ceases. The Memorial Service, the day, the flowers, eventually the plants, and one of these years, us.