Empty fields. Broken hearts. They have a lot in common.
There is that vast expanse of nothing. And buried deeply life flickers.
But some days, some months, you just have to sit with the vast expanse of nothing but what once was. You have to trust that Peace is there, and yet know that at the moment, you’re not responsible for finding it. Your job is to hang on in the grief.
Ours is to be the Peace that is needed. Blessed be.
Peace isn’t always a loud and boisterous thing. And sometimes it moves glacially. For those of us who are let’s go now! kinda people, the measured progress can be tedious.
Other times, it feels pretty wonderful. Part of my lesson as spring comes around this year is about the depth of my grieving. On the one hand, my sister’s absence is becoming somewhat normalized — if normalized is what you mean when you begin to stop reaching for the phone to call her. On the other it’s an endless ache.
I’m beginning to realize that much of this winter I was just numb with the grief. I’m now unpacking it a bit and letting both the numbness and the grief recede. But part of the work of grieving is remembering. So this year as the flowers put on their Spring Show, I’ve been remembering Deb’s pride in her red bud tree. She received a sapling from a friend. It took a while to find a home where it was happy. (it did NOT like being close to the holly!) But eventually it did. It shot up. It flourished and come Spring, it showed Deb and the rest of us how happy it was to be alive.
Except for this year. This year it didn’t bloom. This year, the sapling my sister’s neighbor got from this tree didn’t bloom. Is it odd to find that soothing — to believe it a cosmic recognition that at least my life has tilted on its axis? It was a bitter winter, these two trees may simply not have survived… and I hope they did. But I confess I find Peace in the somewhat silly notion that the trees are mourning too.
