The Last Leaf

When I was twelve, I remember watching O. Henry’s The Last Leaf on television with my dad.  If you’re not familiar, the story tells of a young girl, sick with pneumonia, intent on watching the leaves on a vine outside her window.  With the separation of each leaf into the wind, so was her connectedness to life.  The stubborn vine, deeply embedded in the wall outside her window, quickly dwindled from holding on to many to just a single leaf. 

The single leaf was symbolic of her own mortality. 

At the end of O. Henry’s story, you learn the girl does not die, but not because of the tenacity of a single leaf.  The tenacity came rather from an elderly artist who believed that if he could paint his masterpiece--that single leaf--that leaf would give her the reassurance she needed to live. 

Perched on a ladder, in the rain and wind, by the light of a lantern, he painted.  In the words of O. Henry, “…he painted it there the night the last leaf fell.”

It’s ironic, how thirty years later, I’ve often deferred to this story, if by nothing else just visualizing that singular leaf.  Perhaps because it was one of those few bonding moments I had with my dad.  Now that he’s gone, I find comfort in it. 

It could also be that the single leaf has been the thread I cling to out of necessity.  When on the verge of giving up, I place my faith in something outside my control and it gives me hope.

I wish I were virtuous enough to say that “that something outside” is always God.  Sometimes it is, and sometimes it’s God in disguise. 

And sometimes I have faith despite my attempts to discard it.

 

After my father’s death almost three Easters ago, I contemplated how I felt about life and the life after. And while his passing was tragic, I had to accept that I had no conditional right to withhold faith in God, because the cycle of life is just that. 

When it comes to faith, perhaps God is suggesting that the strength not come from the leaf that hangs on, but rather the vine that persists.  Besides, just because we can’t see the leaves doesn’t mean they aren’t there.