Bee-ing and Dying

The sunshine of Autumn is almost painfully sad.  I want to sit, more often, lay in it, being so, so still that I can hear every leaf move, every bird chirp, every bug walking by.  I can hardly move.  I don’t want to move.  I just want to lay here absorbing the sun, being ever so still.  The sun at other times of year is not like this.  And, usually, I am not so welcoming of sadness.  And this sadness isn’t sentimental or soft, but, strangely, more final, even strident, knowing as I do after more than 50 years, what will come.  Things are dying and their essence is more palpable, more present as they begin to shed all that keeps them from dying.  So, true, of people as well, as they approach death, they begin to offer you their pith, their essence from all of their life experience.

This Autumn I had the good fortune, for the first time, to sit with bees.  And it being Autumn, I sat very still, ear to the hive, watching and listening as they busied themselves getting ready to bed down for the winter.  I watched with wonder as they flew in and out, showing their heart-shaped faces to me, crawling over the hive and slipping inside.  I watched and tears began to roll down my face.  I really have no idea why.  I just know that the simplicity and sweetness of the sunlight and the hum cracked open my heart.

This Autumn I had, also, the great good fortune to be with a friend, before, during and after her death.  To sit with her as she drove herself to complete her life’s work, to sit with her as she struggled to breathe and to sit with her in silence after her death was a remarkable teaching in ways that are still unspeakable to me as yet.  Dying happens.  It happens all the time.  Sometimes we bring death upon us, sometimes we happen upon it, and it almost always takes us by surprise.

To be honest, I am quite grateful that something can still take me by surprise.  I am, too often, caught up in the whirl of life, the pressing of occupation, of doing and creating, and somehow a surprise, just slows things down, softens them up, feels fresh.  In that moment of shock, I can see clearly what arises, what is important and I can re-orient again to this moment.  For this, I am so grateful.  The bees and their little bodies, so alive and so precious, remind me of my own fragile life.  The fact that they could sting me, yet, instead, fly gracefully by, leaving me to soak up the transcendent sunshine of Autumn fortifies my spirit, allows death to enter with grace and beauty and leave with nothing but sunshine.