It's beautiful really - the way the leaves gently turn another colour before they detach themselves from the mother ship and float down. And just before that, there is a still time, when they know it's over - the cartoon character poised over the cliff edge, the moment in the gym before you go into reverse on the cross trainer. The pause. What happens next is inevitable, but before you go, you take a breath, a last look around at all the things you love, then submit to the dark. It's part of the process and pointless to fight it - no railing against the dying of the light for me. Just a few tears, maybe, and some inner notion (possibly delusory) that I fall to rise again. My father's birthday RIP.
