Amazing Grace and Mondays

I wrote this on a Monday two years ago when I was deep in grief and looking for a way out. I'm glad to have found it for today because this has been a difficult week. Too much sadness and worry and heartache for one little set of days. So...yes, I'm glad I found it. I hope you have a great week.

This past week was springy. We've had warmth, rain, wind, and--here and there but not here--fog. The birds are everywhere, flashing flirtatious bright red wings and calling their spring congregants to order in raucous, cheerful voices. My cats, both of them reluctant outdoor residents, leave clumps of winter coat behind when they rub up against the bark of trees. Duane and I pick up hundreds of cottonwood twigs in the yard and grumble about it all the time we sniff greedily at the scent of spring and new beginnings.

I've walked the Nickel Plate a few times, building back up to where two miles won't leave me gasping and leaning forward with my hands on my knees. I didn't exercise all winter, and have yoyo-ed up 20-some pounds in the absence of motion. Does anyone else do this? It's nearly an annual thing for me, I'm not proud to admit.

Also this week, I got a little of my voice back. Silenced by the stress and grief of the illness and loss of my mother-in-law, I hadn't written a word beyond lists petitioning myself to buy eggs and milk in several weeks. This week I wrote a paragraph, then a few, then a couple of pages. I have, however, choked and stumbled over emotion. It's always one of my favorite parts of writing, but when I can't get past my own feelings to experience someone else's, I can't articulate it, either.

My grandsons are in the yard, picking up more sticks--cottonwoods are amazingly prolific with what they give up to the wind--and here is more emotion; there is little in life more fulfilling than being a grandparent. I've heard "Amazing Grace" a dozen times this week and accepted the comfort it offers, but it also opens up more feelings, releases more tears. Yesterday I wanted to call Mom and ask her when to put out the hummingbird feeders and realized I couldn't this year. That hurt.

In Anne of Avonlea, L. M. Montgomery says, “That is one good thing about this world...there are always sure to be more springs.” Along with those springs, even the false ones like this past week, comes depth of feeling that, like the reawakening of the earth, is revitalized each year. I have been this emotional in spring before, when kids and grandkids were born, when our sons married, when Duane and I married, at graduations. Each year, I am amazed.

I will forget by next year how this spring has been. I will be used to Mom being gone. I won't remember how the grandboys look in the yard with the tractor. I will have to be shown again, hear again, feel and see again, the "Amazing Grace" in each day.

Soon this spring, Monday glee I learned from my writer friend Holly Jacobs will be back and I won't quite remember how still and empty these past few Mondays have been, when even if the weather promised spring, winter resided dark and lonely in my heart. Eventually, when the ache lessens, I'll get more of my voice back. The grass will be greener, the sky more blue, the sticks picked up until the wind blows again. There will be kids on ball fields, tractors in fields, music on the air. We will remember that laughter is the blessed breath of life.

Amazing.