I have a traditional walk each fall. My house is at the edge of the Don Valley with the Don River running south to Lake Ontario through the eastern part of Toronto. Taylor Creek Park is the nearest part of the valley to me. The path through the valley is shared by walkers, cyclists, joggers, roller bladders, photographers and lovers.

The autumnal foliage is not quite so brilliant this year, perhaps because of the dry hot summer. But always there are the fallen leaves to be piled high by parents photographing their children amongst flying colours. There are those who stop to chat with strangers drawn by their accompanying dogs. Some wear spandex and others use canes. Some hear the birds, others their ipods.

It is a park full of memories. I first pushed Sue in the wheelchair which she increasingly needed to use. We stopped and I sat on a bench to enjoy the tranquil scene. The peace was broken when a group doing a photo-shoot passed by. Posters were going to be made with the images to encourage people to exercise using the parks. It was sponsored by the East York Health Unit. We gave our consent to be filmed as others of all ages walked by. I saw the resulting poster, Sue clearly visible in a bright red sweater.

A few years later it was amongst these trees with the scrunch of fall leaves that I filmed the finale of the video “Aspects of Caring”

Another autumn came and Sue and I did our fall stroll. By this time we had an electric lifting system to get her in and out of the car. Maybe I was rushing. Perhaps I wasn’t focused, but I twisted her knee as I lowered her into the car seat. Later x-rays would show this action had fractured her tibia just below the knee. Still today the remembrance of that caregiver guilt finds a place on the memory shelf. In the plaster room at the hospital I asked if her knee in the hip to toe plaster cast could be immobilized at a right angle. They said yes. Later I wheeled Sue home in the wheelchair and was able to maneuver it through the house. If her leg had been extended out straight I would never have been able to get her in the front door.

The year after Sue died I had visitors from Wales staying with me. Maggie and Idris had crossed the Atlantic to attend their son’s wedding in the States and stopped off to visit with me. Idris was weakened by cancer. We walked in Taylor Creek Park together. His valiant fight ended before Christmas that year.

So I did my visit to the park this last weekend, aware of the changes in nature over these years. I witness in my garden, in the parks, in the countryside of southern Ontario, the ruthless takeover of the land by the Dog Strangling Vine. Not many years ago it was the Purple Loosestrife that clogged waterways: but this extremely aggressive plant of the milkweed family, often called Pale Swallow-wort has replaced it with a greater threat. It is indestructible; it multiplies by underground rhizomes and fluffy feathery windborne seeds. It strangles plants, climbs trees and its stems are so strong and dense that it is impossible to walk through. Animals get trapped.

It has been in Canada for about 100 years, a native of Southern Russia, but has only in recent years proliferated to the extent that it is destroying the habitat for native plants.

This dangerous weed represents a change to the environment in this park. Nothing stays the same. Though the park provides me with a walk of joyful and sad memories, the need for the memories has changed.

 “You have to let go of the past” we are often told by people who make the assumption that in talking about those who have died is an indication that we haven’t moved on. Sometimes I think it is more a reflection of their inability to deal with death and talk about those who have died. Does it mean that in reminiscing about the life that Sue and I spent together, which ended at her death, I am rooted in the past, experiencing a chronic grief and unable to move forward? I believe not. The fact that I can reminisce, that I can tease out what the experience meant to me, how I grew, what I learned, how it has influence my life in the years since is, for me, a sign of maturation.

I do not feel as if I live like the Dog Strangling Vine. Now that is a species that cannot let go.  But I am aware that many people do not have closure from their past. It haunts their present and will destroy their future. Preoccupations with unfulfilled dreams, lost opportunities and terminated relationships live in the present. That was not their purpose. All events can be used as stepping stones through life and are the lessons from which we learn.  To hold onto the past requires us to recreate the memories anew all the time. We force them to invade the current reality. Having recreated them we still attempt to escape but get trapped and the joy of this day is lost.

I believe the energy field that surrounds us contains the vibrations of the past present and, since experience is not linear, our future. We can bring them into consciousness, we can react anew, and we can let them go. We have that ability. Our society (that teaches us to hold on and have and keep, possess and own), makes it difficult to use the skill of letting go.

In my garden I cut down the Dog Strangling Vines so they will not produce seeds. I may never be able to eradicate their roots. I guess if we are successful, that is also what we hope to do with the pain from the past.