It is a clear, bright, sunny, autumn day. I look out my office window and see the first of the leaves that have started to change. On the web, a friend has posted Late Afternoon Foliage, VT. I am low energy this morning. The weekend was filled up with celebrating Fiona’s birthday. It isn’t until Tuesday, but she spent the weekend with a friend at a water park. It was a great time, but it meant that I didn’t get a chance to join another friend to celebrate his birthday or to a political event in Hartford.

Now, I am achy, Kim is sporting a new cough which she hopes will not turn into anything more, and Fiona just hasn’t had enough sleep. I glance at the emails I have to deal with, including reminders of past financial difficulties. It feels like today will be a long day.

Fall is beautiful, especially here in New England. People travel great distances to see the beauty, but often do not see the full picture. The beauty is in the dying of the leaves. The green Chlorophyll dies, leaving the reds and yellow, which also eventually fade and the leaves turn brown and decompose.

These thoughts come to me as I read a post from another friend. She is an artist and therapist and has been fighting a long battle with leukemia. It starts off,

Hello to all of you reading this on CaringBridge. Sad news, the bone marrow biopsy done a week ago came back badly and the Leukemia is back. This cancer is very aggressive and the prognosis is very poor. In fact we are looking at a few weeks. The strange thing is I still feel those pink clouds around my feet and your love and kindness always there supporting me. Since we started on this recovery, I have been blessed by all of your kindnesses, and love. It has left me feeling like the luckiest woman on earth.

Earlier this year I lost another friend to leukemia and the sadness is palpable. I browse a few blogs before settling down. One blog asks, What is your life’s theme song? The author has chosen the theme from “A River Runs Through It”. I remember reading the story, and a great section about beer,

What a beautiful world it was once. At least a river of it was. And it was almost mine and my family’s and just a few others’ who wouldn’t steal beer. You could leave beer to cool in the river, and it would be so cold when you got back it wouldn’t foam much. It would be a beer made in the next town if the town were ten thousand or over. So it was either Kessler Beer made in Helena or Highlander Beer made in Missoula that we left to cool in the Blackfoot River. What a wonderful world it was once when all the beer was not made in Milwaukee, Minneapolis or St. Louis.

Yes, what is your life’s theme song? A river runs through it is a good choice. The river starting off as a small stream somewhere up in the mountains, coming down through turbulent whitewater, through slow moving sections past far land and ultimately out to see. A river, full of eddies, sediment and toss flotsam back and forth. It reminds me of Smetana’s Moldau,

This, mixed with words of James Joyce in Finnegan’s Wake, ""riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs."

Winter will come all too soon, icing over the river. My friend will probably die soon. She ends her post talking about planning her memorial service:

It may be a little whacky, but will be expressive of my diverse interests and beliefs. I don’t know what will actually happen, but I am sure that it will be filled with love, drums, rattles, and poetry.

Love to all of you, not knowing what comes next – we never can know that –

I pause to reflect, and now it is time to return to my work.