Spring Again

Forsythia

I’m enjoying spring everywhere I go! First in the Deep South, then a bit in North Carolina. Tucson wasn’t quite the burst of flowers I had hoped for but certainly the desert museum had a plethora of blooms.  Now I’m back on the East Coast and it is just as lovely as I remember spring. Spring, whenever it decides to pop, is the crown jewel season for the mid-Atlantic area.

New growth

Spring is new life - green bursting from the ground and from brown branches after their winter rest.  Spring is baby animals and Easter.

Spring is when my husband was diagnosed with cancer.

  

This was our favorite neighborhood to drive through.

Seven years ago there was another glorious April spring.  We knew from the previous few days that something was terribly wrong in Bill’s mouth. We had little experience in cancer land but even a novice recognizes when doctor after doctor enters a room, peers at the screen shots of your body and walks out without a word to you…. something is really wrong.

After a long day, we left the finest hospital in the national capital area and drove to Whole Foods. After choosing veggies, soups and expensive drinks, we joined the throngs of Washingtonians on the annual cherry blossom pilgrimage. 

It was Friday afternoon and enveloped in the glory of spring we slowly drove through the traffic and through our shocked silence.

He asked me if I’d remarry.  I told him he couldn’t die.  

We finally ended up along the bank of the Potomac, far from the hordes at the prime cherry viewing sites. Perched on a damp bench, a carpet of cherry blossoms at our feet, we ate our expensive food and stared at the water. It was spring.  It was seven years ago.

The courtyard at National Instiute of Health

Yesterday I moved into a temporary apartment in Bethesda and met a friend of a friend. She is recovering from a stem cell transplant in her journey against insidious cancer. I'm on her email list. I used to just read about her life in Maine. Then I prayed for her, this friend I hadn't met. 

Today I sit in her hospital room in National Institute of Health. Again I hear the beep of the iv pump; I observe the adjustable hospital bed with rumpled sheets; I smell the disinfectant that blends with the smell of body fluids and medication. I am back in cancer land. The cream walls have a strip of multiple plugs for oxygen, iv monitors, a suspended screen that provides distracting news or movies. The large windows face another building, a green courtyard far below. A beige hospital table wheeled up to the bed has a fake wood surface, an attempt at nature in an unnatural space. Bland, gray containers for ice and water; white Styrofoam cups with lime green mouth swab sticks; and silver Kleenex boxes crowd the table top.  I sit on one of the two high back green chairs; they are stiff and uncomfortable. The mocking presence of the healthy is unwelcome in the land of cancer.

The spring after Bill died, I drove the hour north from my home in Virginia into beautiful Washington, DC. I don’t remember the reason I went or the trip home; I do remember the cherry blossoms, pink and delicate, and how they stabbed a jagged knife into my unprotected heart.  I didn’t seek spring or cherry blossoms for several years.

But my heart has had its winter.  The sap in my veins withdrew to my core and my outer layers were stripped away by the harsh cold winds.  I appeared lost, perhaps even dead.  Like a tree in the winter, still and quiet. The truth of the tree’s structure revealed to an observing world.

And spring has returned to my heart.  Spring is new growth emerging from the rested soil. Spring is trees pushing fresh new sap up from the roots protected from the winter’s freeze. Water thaws and runs fresh, the melody of spring.

My heart is renewed from the rest of my winter. My structure was revealed to be strong and resilient. My roots were protected deep in Grace.   

My joy has thawed and bubbles again.

I’ll always miss Bill. But he would be proud of me. I’m giving back to Leslie.  The lessons from being Bill’s caretaker are not lost.  Compassion is the new fruit of my journey. The Grace that nourished me is nourishing another.  Spring is the earth coming back to life; I’m stepping into a new season, a new life.  

the journey continues, the beauty returns