Falling Leaves and Sorrow

The Miller's Empty Seat

"I have never asked guests for their sad sayings, because a sad proverb only makes a sad heart heavier," said the innkeeper. He was sweeping fallen leaves away from the bench by the door, and he stopped for a moment at the far end. That was where the old miller used to sit.

"Then you have been missing half of the comfort in the world," said the traveler gently, sitting down on the swept bench. "Hardly any of the old sayings about sorrow are there to make it heavier. Most of them were made by people who had lost someone, and they keep a little light inside, for the next person who needs it."

It was full autumn now. She had gone away down the southern road after the harvest, and she had come back with the first cold rains, her coat dark with damp and her notebook wrapped in a cloth inside it. She had heard the news about the miller in the village below, and she had walked the last miles more slowly than usual.

The innkeeper lit the lantern, closed its small glass door, and sat down beside her. A few yellow leaves blew past the light and lay down on the stones of the crossroads, and for a while neither of them spoke.

"He sat there every evening for thirty years," the innkeeper said at last. "He used to tell me when the wick needed trimming before I had even noticed it myself. One night in a storm, when I was ill in bed, he came up the hill in the rain and lit it for me, and he never once mentioned it afterward."

Sorrow Cut in Half

The first saying the traveler read him was one she had copied out years before, on a winter evening in the north. In Swedish it is "Delad glädje är dubbel glädje, delad sorg är halv sorg", "shared joy is double joy, shared sorrow is half sorrow". Very similar sayings are found in German, Danish and several other languages, and people say them at weddings and at funerals alike. The saying does not promise that sorrow disappears. It promises that sorrow carried by two people weighs less on each of them, which anyone who has ever cried with a friend already knows.

Imagine you are on a long train journey when a message arrives telling you that an old friend at home has died. "You do not have to tell me anything, but if you want to, I am going all the way to the end of the line," says the woman in the seat opposite after a while, offering you a cup of tea from her flask. You tell her about your friend for an hour, and when you step off the train, you notice that the weight in your chest is still there, but it is lighter. "Shared sorrow is half sorrow," she says as she shakes your hand on the platform.

"Then he and I should have talked more about his wife, after she died," said the innkeeper. "He came here every evening, and I think now that he was halving it with me without ever saying so."

"He was," said the traveler, "and you were halving yours with him, every evening, under this same lantern."

Clouds Across the Moon

The next sayings, the traveler said, do look sad at first glance, and yet they comfort in their own quiet way. In Japanese there is "Tsuki ni murakumo, hana ni kaze", "clouds across the moon, wind upon the blossoms". It means that lovely things rarely last undisturbed, because just when the moon is fullest, clouds drift over it, and just when the blossoms open, the wind comes to scatter them. Japanese also has "Naki-tsura ni hachi", "a bee stings the crying face", about one misfortune landing on top of another. In Russian, "Beda ne prikhodit odna" means "trouble never comes alone", and it is said with a sigh when bad news arrives in pairs.

"And where is the comfort in that?" asked the innkeeper, a little sharply, and the lantern's flame shook in a gust of wind.

"The comfort is that someone noticed it before you did," said the traveler. "When troubles come in a crowd, it is easy to believe that you alone have been singled out. These sayings tell you that the same thing has happened to people everywhere, in every century, so often that they had to make a saying for it. Being told that you are not the first is often the beginning of feeling less alone."

Imagine you have lost your wallet in a busy station, and an hour later you learn that your train has been cancelled as well. "Trouble never comes alone, as my mother used to say, so sit down here and let the third thing be a good one," says the man running the station café. He sets a bowl of soup in front of you without being asked. You laugh in spite of everything, and by the time the bowl is empty, someone has handed your wallet in at the ticket office.

The Old Man's Horse

Some sayings go further and suggest that a loss may turn out differently in the end. In Chinese there is "Sài wēng shī mǎ, yān zhī fēi fú", "the old man at the frontier lost his horse, but who can say it was not good luck?" It comes from an old story, which is still told to children. A man living near the border lost his horse, and his neighbors pitied him, but the horse came back with a fine mare. Then his son broke a leg riding the mare, and the neighbors pitied him again, but the injury kept the son at home when the young men were taken off to war. The story never ends with a final verdict on what was lucky and what was not. That is its whole point: while you are standing in the middle of a loss, you cannot yet see where the road will lead. In Italian, "Non tutto il male viene per nuocere" means "not every misfortune comes to do harm". In Polish there is "Nie ma tego złego, co by na dobre nie wyszło", "there is no bad thing that does not turn out good in some way". These sayings are never used to tell a grieving person that a death was good. They are said later, about the smaller losses of life, a missed boat or a lost job, when the road that opened afterward turned out better than the one that closed.

"He would have liked the story of the horse," said the innkeeper. "He never trusted good news or bad news until it had been in the house for a week."

Imagine you missed the last ferry to the island you had planned to visit, and you had to spend the night in a small harbor town instead. At supper in the only inn, you meet a family who invite you to their grandmother's birthday the next day, the happiest evening of your whole journey. "Not every misfortune comes to do harm," says the grandmother, raising her glass to you, when you tell her about the ferry.

Nights That End in Morning

The traveler turned a page, and the lantern showed four sayings in four different colors of ink, because she had written each one down in a different year. In Turkish, "Her gecenin bir sabahı vardır" means "every night has a morning". In Korean, "Gosaeng kkeute nagi onda" means "at the end of hardship comes joy". In Swahili, "Baada ya dhiki faraja" means "after hardship comes comfort". In Dutch, "Na regen komt zonneschijn" means "after rain comes sunshine", and it is the one people say most often to children with scraped knees and to friends with broken hearts. All four sayings were made by people who knew long nights and heavy rain, and none of them pretends that the night is short. They simply refuse to believe that it is the last thing there will be. What differs is only the weather each place knew best: the night in one, the rain in another, and in two of them the plain word hardship, without any weather at all.

"My father died while I was on the road, many years ago, and I heard the news three weeks too late," said the traveler, looking into the lantern. "An old woman at a well in the east saw me crying and told me the Turkish one, every night has a morning. I did not believe her that evening, but I wrote it down, and some mornings later I found that I did."

The innkeeper put his hand on her arm for a moment, and neither of them said anything more about it.

Imagine you have spent three grey days in a mountain town waiting for a road to reopen after a landslide, and your plans have fallen apart one by one. "After rain comes sunshine, as we say at home, where it rains on more days than it does not," says the cyclist sharing your guesthouse table, who comes from the flat, windy lands beside a grey northern sea. On the fourth morning the road opens, and the sun comes out over the wet roofs as you drive away.

The Ring of Passing Time

"There is one more family of sayings," said the traveler, "and it is about time." In Persian there is "In niz bogzarad", "this too shall pass". It belongs to an old story about a king who asked for words that would make a sad man happy and a happy man sad. The words he was given were carved inside a ring. In Spanish, "No hay mal que cien años dure" means "there is no misfortune that lasts a hundred years". It is often said with a small smile, because a hundred years is longer than any trouble, and longer than any of us. In German, "Die Zeit heilt alle Wunden" means "time heals all wounds".

Imagine you are sitting in a hospital waiting room far from home, where a fellow traveler has been taken after a fall on the mountain, and you have been there all night. "In my grandmother's house there was a plate on the wall with three words painted on it, and they meant this too shall pass," says the nurse who brings you a blanket at dawn. "She hung it there the year my grandfather died, and she said it was true for good days as well as bad ones." In the afternoon your friend is allowed to sit up and eat, and you think of the plate on the wall all the way home.

"Time has not healed this one yet," said the innkeeper.

"No, and it will not heal it by the end of the month either," said the traveler. "The sayings never say how much time, and they never say that you will forget. They only say that the wound will not stay as raw as it is tonight, and that is a small promise you can lean on until it comes true."

Turnings in the Road

The last saying in her notebook for that evening was Irish, and she said she had first heard it from a carter on a wet road in the west. "Is fada an bóthar nach mbíonn casadh ann" means "it is a long road that has no turning". It is said to anyone who has been unlucky for a long time. It promises that the road will bend at last, even if no one can see the bend from here. The innkeeper said that he liked that one best of all, because he had spent his whole life at a place where roads turn.

Imagine you are walking a long trail in the rain, on the fifth wet day in a row, and your boots have not been dry since Monday. "It is a long road that has no turning, and this one turns in two miles, right at a café with a stove," says the walker who catches up with you, an older woman with a stick and a cheerful face. You laugh and walk faster, and the road does turn, and the stove is lit.

"The miller's road turned too, in the end," said the innkeeper softly. "I hope it turned somewhere warm."

Grieving Together

While the leaves blew past, the traveler told him about an old word. The English word "condolence" comes from Latin, from a word that meant to grieve or suffer together with someone, and "compassion" has a very similar root, meaning to suffer with. So when people offer their condolences at a funeral, they are saying, in a language long gone, that they are sharing the sorrow. The Swedish saying about half a sorrow and these old Latin words were made far apart, and yet they hold the same idea. The innkeeper said that the whole valley had come to the miller's funeral, and that only now did he understand what all those quiet handshakes had been for.

A Leaf Between the Pages

Here is a small thing to try when you travel in autumn. Pick up one fallen leaf on your walk and press it between the pages of your notebook. Beside it write the name of someone you miss and one saying from this evening. Then, the next time you meet someone on the road who is carrying a sorrow, do not hurry to cheer them up. Ask them instead whether their language has a saying for a sad time, and offer one of yours in return. Two sayings shared at a bus stop can halve a sorrow as well as any long speech.

Lantern Light on Wet Leaves

The innkeeper got up, opened the little glass door of the lantern, and trimmed the wick, the way the old miller used to remind him to. The flame grew taller and clearer, and the wet leaves on the stones shone in its light.

So the evening's sayings came together around the empty seat. A shared sorrow is half a sorrow, and clouds across the moon, a bee on a crying face and troubles that come in pairs only tell you that others have been there before. The old man's horse, the misfortune that does no harm and the bad thing that turns out good in the end keep the future open. Every night has a morning, joy and comfort come after hardship, and after rain comes sunshine. This too shall pass, no misfortune lasts a hundred years, time heals, and every long road has a turning. Not one of them had made the innkeeper's sorrow heavier. As the lantern burned on, the traveler asked him a question she had wondered about for years: what does home mean to someone who has never left it?