If a Leaf Falls, Do You Hear It?

A leaf can make a sound when it falls.

I know because I have heard one.

One Saturday, while I was outside, I watched a leaf fall from a tree and drift slowly towards the ground. When it landed, I heard it. It was not loud or dramatic, but it made a distinct sound.

I noticed because I was paying attention.

Six days later, a young woman I worked with died in a car accident.

July 26 marks two years since her death.

I have thought about that falling leaf many times since then. I do not consider it an omen or believe it was a warning about what was to come. It was simply an ordinary moment that stayed with me, perhaps because, before the following week was over, a young life would be lost and something would feel permanently out of place.

At the time, I was still relatively new to the organization and was getting to know the people around me, including her.

She was an intelligent and outspoken young woman with enormous potential. She could be very direct, and there were times when she was frustrating or difficult to understand. She was frequently late and sometimes absent, although there was usually an explanation.

I did not know much about her life outside of work, and I would not pretend that I did. I only knew what I observed during our interactions. She seemed to have many things she wanted to accomplish, and at times, I sensed that she was frustrated because life was not moving as quickly as she wanted it to.

Still, there were glimpses of the person beneath the frustration.

The Christmas before her death, she had selected my name for the office gift exchange. When the day arrived, she came to me and explained that she had not been able to purchase my gift. She promised that as soon as she was paid, she would get something for me.

And she did.

It was not the gift itself that remained with me. It was the fact that she remembered her promise and returned to fulfil it. It was a small gesture, but it revealed something about her character that could easily have been overlooked.

The Friday before the accident, we had a difficult conversation.

Her team had been scheduled to go out that morning. When they were ready to leave, they could not find her, so they went without her. She arrived shortly afterwards and came to tell me that she had seen them leaving and felt they had not looked for her.

I explained that the workday had already begun and that they should not have needed to search for her. She should have been at her desk.

As part of my role, I later presented her with a formal warning in the presence of her manager. It was an uncomfortable conversation, but one I was required to address.

After the meeting ended and her manager left my office, she returned to speak with me privately.

She was beginning to open up.

Then she was gone.

When I received the call from one of her relatives, I initially thought someone was calling to say that she would not be coming to work.

Instead, I was being told that she had died.

There are moments when you hear the words being spoken, but your mind refuses to understand them. You wait for the person to explain that there has been a mistake or some terrible misunderstanding.

There had been no misunderstanding.

I had to contact the appropriate person within the organization and then help inform the staff. The news was already beginning to circulate online, and I felt strongly that her colleagues should hear it directly rather than discover it through social media.

We gathered together and prayed.

Some people cried. Others sat quietly, trying to process what they had just heard. Everyone was in shock.

It is strange to watch a workplace absorb a death.

One day, a person is part of the ordinary rhythm of the office. They sit at their desk, answer questions, make mistakes, laugh, irritate people, contribute ideas, and occupy a place within the team.

Then suddenly, they are no longer there.

The chair remains.

The work remains.

The emails continue to arrive. The telephone continues to ring. People slowly return to their responsibilities because, somehow, the world keeps moving.

I understand that work must continue.

But continuing does not mean that a person’s absence should go unnoticed.

Arrangements were made for a counsellor to speak with the staff, and people tried to support one another in the ways they knew how. Still, I remember struggling with how quickly ordinary expectations returned.

Perhaps that was simply grief speaking.

When someone dies, especially suddenly, it can be difficult to understand how the rest of the world continues as normal. Traffic still moves, appointments remain scheduled, and people carry on with their day while your own world feels completely changed.

It feels as though everything should pause, even if only for a moment, to acknowledge that someone is no longer here.

After her death, there were many emotions and many opinions. People were hurt, confused, and searching for somewhere to place their grief. That sometimes happens after a sudden loss. We replay conversations, examine decisions, and wonder whether something could have been different.

But grief does not always provide answers.

And blame does not bring anyone back.

What I continued to think about was how easily a person can be reduced to the parts of themselves that cause inconvenience.

The lateness.

The absences.

The attitude.

The mistakes.

When someone is alive, those things can become the focus. Yet when they are gone, we suddenly begin to remember the whole person.

We remember their intelligence.

Their humour.

Their ambitions.

The small promises they kept.

The conversations they returned to finish.

The possibility we saw in them, even when they could not yet see it clearly in themselves.

Her attendance record was not the complete story of her life.

Neither was the warning letter I had given her.

For a long time, I carried some discomfort about that final workplace conversation. I wondered whether I had been too firm, even though I knew I had been doing my job and addressing something that needed to be addressed.

But our conversation was not only about what she had done wrong. We also spoke about her potential and what she was capable of becoming. That is part of why the conversation remained with me.

I often thought about the fact that she returned to my office afterwards.

What else might she have eventually shared?

What might I have come to understand about her if there had been more time?

Sudden death does not allow us to complete unfinished conversations. It does not wait until every misunderstanding has been resolved or every thought has been fully expressed.

There was no opportunity to continue building the trust that had begun between us, or to see what she might have done with the potential we had spoken about.

Two years later, I still think about her.

Sometimes, I am surprised by how much I miss her because we had not known each other for very long. We were not especially close. Our relationship was still forming.

Perhaps that is part of what I mourn.

I mourn the person I was beginning to know.

I mourn the potential that would never be fully realized.

I mourn the conversations that were never finished.

And I mourn how quickly a person can move from being present in our everyday lives to becoming a memory.

She could be frustrating.

She could be challenging.

She could also be intelligent, memorable, and full of possibility.

She was a young woman who was still becoming. Like all of us, she was trying, struggling, learning and hoping that life would eventually become what she imagined it could be.

She was imperfect.

She was here.

And she mattered.

A falling leaf is a quiet thing. It can happen while clothes are being hung, cars are passing, and the rest of the world is going about its business.

Most people may never notice it.

But that does not mean it makes no sound.

Sometimes, someone simply has to be paying attention.

She had a quiet way of moving through the day. She spoke to those she chose to speak to, kept much of herself to herself, and yet her presence had become part of the ordinary rhythm of the workplace.

Six days after I heard that leaf fall, her life was suddenly cut short.

I could never have known what that week would bring, but the memory of the leaf has remained with me. Perhaps it reminds me that a person does not have to be loud to leave an absence behind and that every life deserves to be noticed while it is here.

Two years later, I am still paying attention to the space she left behind.