March Right In....

"March bustles in on windy feet
And sweeps my doorstep and my street.
She washes and cleans with pounding rains,
Scrubbing the earth of winter stains.
She shakes the grime from carpet green
Till naught but fresh new blades are seen.
Then, house in order, all neat as a pin,
She ushers gentle springtime in."
-  Susan Reiner, Spring Cleaning 

Winter brings a sense of “coorie doon” (settling in or battening down)…a time to rest the spirit from the bustle of the dying year. For we who are widowed it seems also a time learn to find our way within the sadness that dwells deep in our bones…to work through the sorrow that keeps us wrapped within the hollow of our hearts.

Spring, or the hope of it, awakens the anticipation of something tantalizingly unseen just around the next corner. We have survived the bones of winter and watch for that first greening that welcomes life back into both the land and into our souls.

There is a burst to Spring…the seemingly all at once bloom to things that says “here I come”. It stirs the blood and tingles the brain with anticipation. It is a time also of confusion….winter…spring…no winter…no spring…the back and forth of light and dark, cold and the promise of the warmth to come.

We widowed folk also are a lot like that. Having come to terms with what we’ve lost, we fight to find what we can gain. New life comes hard. There is a certain comfort to the sorrow we cocoon ourselves within. But, just as the caterpillar metamorphoses from its womb of silk as the butterfly, so must we also free ourselves from the web of death back into the sunlight of living.

As Spring grows green and retirement approaches reality, I feel the stirring of that urge that to run I seem to have inherited from my dad…a growing need to move, move, move. (could be it’s a Spring Equinox thing…but, it’s there nonetheless.)

New vistas await and I am restless for the adventure to begin.

80 days and counting…..