Practicing small deaths

What if dying wasn’t something that happened once, but something we learned to do, little by little, all the time?

This week’s contemplation is a special one—I had the gift of writing it alongside my sister, Kate. She’s known in our family for her beautiful poetry, and now she’s lending her voice to Hello, Mortal. You may be reading more of her in the future.

And with that, here is your Sunday contemplation.

Photo of a cemetery in Phoenixville taken by Kate.

Aren’t we all always dying a little bit?

We lose little bits of ourselves as we journey through life. We outgrow an edge we once had. We hand pieces of ourselves to others in need. We shed our skin again and again. We evolve.

Astrologically, we leave the Year of the Snake tomorrow, on Feb 16th. In the Chinese zodiac, the Year of the Snake is associated with renewal, intuition, and transformation— a year about shedding parts of ourselves we’ve outgrown and releasing what no longer serves us. And, as we leave the snake to enter the Year of the Fire Horse, much may feel unsteady. The future is always unknown.

How do we let go of who we were so we can become who we’re meant to be? Not just as individuals, but as a society?

In Learning from Trees, poet Grace Butcher offers a simple yet profound invitation: to practice dying the way we practice birthdays or vacations, as naturally as trees shed their leaves. There is no fighting the change of seasons, just acceptance of the certainty that they will change.

For trees, death is not a catastrophic rupture, but rather a part of the rhythm of being alive. Trees don’t mourn the fall—they prepare for it. They stand bare, open to being undone and to rest. They know something we’ve forgotten: that loss is part of the design.

How can we as humans accept the fact that we will all one day die? And how can we realize that the final transformation is just a larger version of the small adjustments we make every day, every year, throughout our lifetime?

When I first read Butcher’s poem, I loved it for the way it challenged me to reframe dying—not as an interruption, but as a practice. And I find myself returning to it in seasons of transition, endings, and new beginnings.

Learning from Trees

By Grace Butcher

If we could,
like the trees,
practice dying,
do it every year
just as something we do—
like going on vacation
or celebrating birthdays,
it would become
as easy a part of us
as our hair or clothing.

Someone would show us how
to lie down and fade away
as if in deepest meditation,
and we would learn
about the fine dark emptiness,
both knowing it and not knowing it,
and coming back would be irrelevant.

Whatever it is the trees know
when they stand undone,
surprisingly intricate,
we need to know also
so we can allow
that last thing
to happen to us
as if it were only
any ordinary thing,

leaves and lives
falling away,
the spirit, complex,
waiting in the fine darkness
to learn which way
it will go.

***

For this week’s contemplation, we invite you to sit by or look at a tree and meditate on this poem. Ask yourself: what have we (or do we need to) shed so that we can grow? And what outdated beliefs or ideals must we release—together—so something new can take root?

— Maura & Kate

P.S.

This poem was submitted by a hello, mortal member. If you have poems about mortality, impermanence, etc, that you would like to share/submit, we’d love to receive them!