The wisdom of loss is a relentless thing – a mean lesson that we’d like to avoid. Some things, we just don’t want to know. But in the ragged journey of grief, we learn the limits of things. We learn to live with a hole in our hearts, to be sturdy no matter what, and to be here now. To savor the grace of every small moment, even if it’s fraught or messy or hard.

This morning, Bodi and I walk around the head of the lake. The air is cool at 42 degrees, and fog hangs over the water as the lake gives up its heat. All along the road, caterpillars are munching on milkweed plants, hoping, I guess, to become butterflies for a few days before the cold sets in. Feral apple trees are letting go of fruit, and much of the roadside is littered with red and yellow apples. And the acorns are falling already, oaks dropping them as the days grow short. Mallards are huddled together at the little beach, the geese sail overhead, and the wild grapes are growing tawny in alder thickets that lean over water.

And the pears are nearly ripe. Trees I planted almost 20 years ago are loaded with small but soon-luscious fruit getting ready to blush gold. My every coldish Fall morning is spent kneeling in dewy grass, picking up what’s fallen in the night, trying to beat the deer and crows and skunks to the fruit. In late Summer, I hang swirling silver tape all around the trees, stand “owl balloons” up in the laden branches. But it never really works. No matter how carefully I watch the fruit ripen, or how early I get out to scavenge each morning for what I can save from the local critters, I will lose some pears. Still, it all turns out okay. Every year, gold and rosy pears spread out to cover the dining room table and I wait until just the right ripeness to make pear butter. And every year, I am so much in love with abundance, even if it’s crow pecked and deer chewed.

The lushness and the loss make me think about aging, and change, and surrendering to the way things work. To the way life – and death – work. Ultimately, like the caterpillars heading toward freedom, and the apples waiting to be pecked at by coyotes, we are all walking forward into the stunning Mystery, and learning to let go – all gaining a relentless and wrenching wisdom, and daring to love, even though everything will fade away.

Which for some reason makes me smile. I have loved so many things that have fallen, but still grow so sweetly ripe and mellow in my heart.