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Published 10/24/02 in The Post-Star newspaper Knowing when to bid adieu COMMENTARY By STACEY MORRIS I've never been fond of goodbyes. Because of this, I have a tendency to hang on -- even when taking a deep breath to say a final goodbye is long overdue. Take my impatiens for instance. They've been on my balcony since May, growing more abundant by the week, thriving in a spot where their delicate blooms are adequately sheltered from direct sun and nurtured by a confluence of warm breezes from a nearby grove of pine trees. This year, my lavender impatiens lived a happy life for nearly five months, perched on the rail of the balcony. And now, as the end of October is upon us and the frosty nights set in, it's not exactly an algebra puzzle that the season is past for this summer variety of botanica. But I'm still determined to perpetuate their existence, keeping them on life support with warm drinks of water and shrouding them in sheets at night. They're still quite alive. But each day, the three boxes of lavender impatiens are a little less fluffy. They no longer fall with the same voluptuous grace over the edges of my window boxes, but I hang on -- even though I know they can't be having much fun in this cold weather. Five years ago, I was so reluctant to say the G word, I kept them going until early November. "Oh, let them go," urged a friend when he saw my pink and white summer flowers mingling with fallen yellow leaves and pots of hearty mums. I tried every trick in the book to keep them alive, even repotting them indoors one time, where they lasted all of two seconds. That's one of the things I so appreciate about Mother Nature: She's never been one to collude with my denial. Each fall, I seem to wrestle with the same dilemma -- me not wanting to readily accept a simple fact of life: that for my lavender impatiens, their season has ended. They are going to die. Living where we do, we're confronted with a specific reality four times a year: There are cycles and rhythms to life that are beyond our control. And they definitely transcend my desire to cling to the status quo. In this lifetime, if I can acquire the temperance and emotional maturity to say goodbye when it's time, I'll have made quite a leap in my evolutionary journey. In the grand scheme of things, impatiens petering out are small potatoes. But it's not just the flowers themselves I will miss, but all they represent: longer days, garden-grown tomatoes in salads, swimming in Lake George after work. Downing those horrible, genetically engineered tomatoes from the supermarket (the ones that bounce off linoleum like a tennis ball) is hardly a proper substitute for the produce sold at farmers markets. And neither is doing laps in a chlorinated pool. Dislodging the impatiens from their green, plastic window boxes means I'm one step closer to three-figure heating bills and scraping ice off my windshield. Keeping a life-support vigil over my lavender impatiens won't change that. So it's time to say goodbye with grace. If I do it now, I'll still have time to decorate the balcony with a Jack-o'-lantern in time for Halloween. |