By Miriam Brantley
PROMPT — The way I see it ...
I sit on a bench in a courtyard, shaded by a tree with signs of a dying summer on every side. The mountain tops have their first dusting of snow, and the treetops are touched with changing colors. The bench is hard and cold, the chill cutting through my clothes. The trees are holding on to the light, each leaf drinking in the warm rays while they last. The first fall leaves, papery and dry, are scattered across the pavement.
As I write, a fountain churns cheerfully to my left, unaware that its merriment will soon slow and then still in a dreamlike, frosty mirror. Young tendril-y flowers lazily lie in their rich earthy bed, their crisp stems with delicate skins that snap cleanly when stepped on poorly protected from the coming cold. They will suddenly freeze and will not resurrect. But they are beautiful now, crowned with deep and radiant color. The air feels crisper, fresher. The sunlight gentler and less sharp. All seems to whisper, “autumn.”
I love the softness of this season—between hot and cold; light and dark; energy and sleepiness. The interim between what was and what is to come. The savoring of the things that become even more beautiful as they begin to die.
This past summer, while the world still shone green and vibrant, my grandpa—my mother’s father—was diagnosed with cancer. I remember scrolling over the message in our extended family group chat and feeling a sudden jump in my chest as though my heart had expanded to twice its size and back again in a moment. There comes a point where you begin to expect grandparents to fade. But I had been nowhere near there for Grandpa Bob. Of all four of my grandparents, I had expected him to hold out the longest. He was the healthiest, the most vibrant, the most alive. Yet somehow, the card of cancer had been dealt to him, and I was unsure of how to respond.
The first thing I remember doing upon hearing the news was kneeling by my bedside to pray. All my hopes paraded across my mind, and I set my heart upon asking God to heal and save my grandpa. To heal him and to let him live even just a little bit longer—at least until December when he would hold my first baby in his arms. But though filled with all the words I wanted to say, I could not deliver them to my mouth. My throat seemed to constrict, holding my unspoken wishes within to ricochet off the walls of my heart until they fell down and died there.
A couple months prior, in the Spring, my heart beat fast as I sat on the edge of a vinyl patient bed in a strange-smelling and cramped room waiting for the OBGYN to enter. Upon entry, he pressed an ultrasound camera at different angles along my abdomen and fuzzy images of black and white swept across the screen until a little white form came into view. My baby. A tiny life, compacted into the size of a gummy bear, surrounded by a dark void on all sides. We got to hear his heartbeat—his tiny pulse of 180.
As we walked out of that office into the fresh, chilly air, laden with a secret that would soon be shared with all my loved ones, my heart went out to my grandparents. They had taught my mother from a young age through love and example that there is no greater gift than the gift of children, and that conviction, instilled within her, gave her the courage to bear me when she was still a student. So, in a very real sense—beyond them being my progenitors—I owe my life to my grandparents. And at the close of my grandpa’s life, I yearned to place my little newborn in his aged arms and see his joy at holding near to his heart this little life. One he had paved the way for through his own.
My family met Grandpa Bob’s diagnosis with hope and faith. They rallied around him and began to research all the ways to stop cancer in its tracks. What kills cancer, they wondered? Fasting to starve it? A diet of berries and coniferous greens? Prayers and more prayers? The suggestions seemed continuous. Everyone had different opinions. Everyone wanted to buy him more time. Whenever I went to visit him and my grandma in his basement apartment, I found at least one of his children there beside him or bustling about, instructing him on what he should eat, what he should do, and what he should not do. But amid their instructions, I remembered that moment when I had knelt to pray for his recovery—how my throat had seemed to swell and hold back the words I wanted to say. And I somehow knew he would not recover.
I felt the end coming. I watched as he faded as rapidly as the fall leaves. What had been green and vibrant only weeks before grew frail and weak. His eyes grew brighter while his body sagged, as if his spirit were burning away his outer shell in preparation for its coming escape—like fall leaves brightening in a final show of glory before their sudden descent. In a flash, his three months to live changed to two, and he was gone.
This month, my baby will come with all the glory of a new life, completely unaware of how a life that just ended paved the way for his, like blossoms bursting out of seemingly dead branches, fertilized by plants that died and returned to the soil. My grandpa and my baby kept apart by the interim of autumn—the season between life and death. One soul sent from heaven and one returning there. Both “trailing clouds of glory” (Wordsworth). Cyclical seasons. Cyclical lives. And me, in the interim. I hope that my life can forge a connection between these lives that cannot directly touch—a link across time.
I see this happening several autumns from now, when I will hold my little boy in my arms under the fiery fall canopy. Though I cannot summon my grandpa back to life, Fall is a witness to his glory—the glory of a life well lived. And as I hold my little son, I will tell him about my grandpa and watch as his eyes alight with wonder at the sight of the flaming leaves.
Miriam Brantley is a senior majoring in English with a creative writing emphasis at Brigham Young University. Her poetry and creative nonfiction are as of yet unpublished and reflect an interest in themes of relationships, loss, and regret.
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