To Love What is Lovely and Does Not Last

Oh to love what is lovely and does not last.

Mary Oliver’s words repeat in my mind as I pull up the tomato plants for their last harvest.

It’s October, and inside is Jacob, the 19-year-old cat I’ve loved for six years since adopting him. He struggles to walk because his hips are so weak. He struggles to poop and pee. This morning he fell over in the litter box as he strained and strained to go.

This has been happening sporadically for a year or two, but it’s getting much more frequent and severe lately. His vet visits at least once a month to give him a shot for his arthritis and check up on him.

I push my face into the leaves of the tomatoes — my favorite smell. I thank the plants for the fruit they gave me this summer. For the delicious meals. For this scent. For their beauty. All the joy and nourishment they’ve given me. I cry as I pull up the roots from the soil.

Thank you for being temporary with me, I tell them.

Impermanence. The thing that makes life both brutal and meaningful. This seems like a cruel joke at times. To love what is lovely and does not last. I’m trying … to see it for the beautiful cycle it is. To be more grateful than sad.

Isn’t it a sign of spiritual maturity to face death without sobbing and pain? I think of my aunt next to my father’s hospital bed as he took his final breaths. She was calm and may have even had a slight smile — a witness to an important passage, to a living being experiencing something all living beings experience. Meanwhile my sisters and I sobbed over the foot of his bed.

Will I ever be able to be a witness to death without breaking down? Is that preferable? I don’t know. I just wish I could always see it as the cycle. There is no end, just a recycling.

Everything is temporary and yet nothing is — it just recycles. Energy, matter, legacies, memories, suffering, joy.

I stuff what I can of the tomato plants into the compost. They will rot, break down and next year nourish a new plant. Become a new form.

My husband and I will have to make a decision soon. It will be brutal. Yet this is our task.

For now I go inside and pet Jacob while he purrs in a ray of sun.

Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last!

What a task

to ask

of anything, or anyone,

yet it is ours,

and not by the century or the year, but by the hours.

— Mary Oliver (excerpt from “Snow Geese”)