Life and Death: Everything Has its Season!
Sometimes, you end up with a completely different line of thought from what you originally thought you were going to have!
Today, I was actually planning to sit down and write about the coming of fall and memories of harvesting back from our extensive kitchen garden in Denmark when I was a kid, but instead I got to thinking about birthdays… and death.
In our family, the month of August was always the big "birthday month" starting with my dad on the 6th and ending with one of my cousins on the 31st. Naturally, that meant most of us were in a pretty celebratory mood, because it was still rather ”summerish” outside and we'd have quite a few birthday celebrations that would take place in back yards, or at least would involve outside activities of some kind.
I think many of these celebrations stuck in my memory because they would frequently involve bonfires and barbecues — and when I was a kid barbecues in Denmark were quite a rarity — which seemed like a bit of a treat to an 8-10 year old kid.
What I don't recall anybody ever paying much attention to was the fact that so many people in our family would pass away between September 15th in the 1st of November. Or so it seemed. My dad, my stepdad, a couple of aunts and uncles (including my favorite auntie who helped raise me), a cousin… it all seemed to be clustered around this part of the fall season.
At first, I thought I was just looking for a pattern where there actually was none but I went back through my paper journal — where I have a couple of pages where I keep a list of birthdays and also corresponding list of when certain people have passed away — and in fact it does seem like almost as many people in our family have left this world during this 45 day period, as during the remaining 10 1/2 months of the year.
Because I tend to "think too much," I then found myself wondering whether such patterns are purely coincidental and whether every family has events that seem clustered together, even though such clusters actually don't have any correlation to any kind of meaningful external factors.
No worries... this is not exactly something I'm going to lose sleep over, but it is an interesting thing for me, just because I've always been fascinated by patterns and why they happen.
In spite of remembering this loss of family members in the fall, this has always been one of my favorite seasons, not least of all because I love photographing the fall colors on the trees.
Getting back to my original intention for this post, I also love the harvest season. There is a great feeling of accomplishment that comes with being able to dig up a bunch of potatoes and onions and store them for winter, and knowing that your diligence in getting things to grow, back in the spring, have paid off.
With life — and particularly the economic situation here in the USA — being as uncertain as it is these days, it's nice to have at least a little bit of a backup plan in case the shit hits the fan! Or (at least) we see interruptions in the food supply again, "Covid style."
We still have a fair bit to bring in from the garden, and there are still fresh greens we'll keep enjoying till the first frost...
Thanks for taking a moment to stop by, and have a great week ahead!
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Created at 2025.10.05 19:15 PST
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In my family birthdays cluster in July. I looked up deaths, my mom in October last year, my dad and his mom in November, my uncle in October, but the others were spread out over the year. Hmmm, I wonder what it is about the autumn... Personally if I was to go, it would be after the foliage had fallen and before the Christmas season had started. I'd hate to go in spring.
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