"You seem concerned," the leaf said. Startled at the prospect of a talking leaf, Jim just stared at it and then decided it couldn't hurt to respond. "I am concerned," he replied. "My life is passing so quickly and one day it will be over, just as your life is now ending. And I will be dead."
"My life will never be over," the leaf answered. "And neither will your life. For I am about to become compost, helping to fertilize this lawn. In turn, when the lawn is mowed, the clippings will be placed under the tree from which I had been.
"Those clippings will become compost to the tree, its nutrients including me, fertilizing the tree and as I decompose, as a nutrient I will flow back into the tree. And guess what. As the tree sprouts new leaves, one of them will be me.
"As a living being, I'm never really gone at all. I just take different forms in nature's process. That's true for you too. You never die, you just take various forms in life's process."
Jim had never before thought of life in that way and a smile crossed his lips.
"Does it hurt," he asked the leaf, no longer concerned about speaking to a leaf. "Not at all," the leaf replied. "It was fascinating to ride the gentle breeze down and to see the world from a different perspective.
"And as I become a a tender new leaf, I will be wiser from the process and much healthier than the aged leaf I was. So will you one day cast off an aged and frail or sick body to begin anew."
As Jim listened to the leaf, he suddenly felt so much better about his life, as the burden of his fear of death was lifted from his shoulders. In gratitude, he reached down to pickup and protect the leaf. "Please don't do that," said the leaf.
"The best thing that could happen to me is happening to me. And now I will also live on in your heart, my words there to lift your spirits."
Dick
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