Yesterday, I took to my bed and stayed there.  Today, I was ready to throw off the mantle of exhaustion, walk out into the sunshine and accomplish something…anything.  Sadly, there is no sunshine today, so I am not out … I am in.  Inside this house, inside the mundane, in my “to do” list … in, in, in.

April is, perhaps, for me one of the most challenging months of the year.  My father died in April of 1990.  Just as the daffodils bloom and my tulips, the ones that were not supposed to be perennial in this climate, are about to open … just as the dogwoods are painting their color and fragility onto the sky’s canvas, just as nature is greening itself and getting its “lush” on, I am thinking of death.  Well, this is Lent.  Spring.  The dualities I am pondering are more complicated and mysterious than I can describe here.  My body, more than my mind, grieves (by shutting down) the loss of a man I loved and, at times, hated; a man whom I forgave long ago, yet whose memory can sometimes still anger me.  Simultaneously, my mind is at war with this body, my body, over which I have limited control.  It grieves as it will.  It ages as it will.  Flowers bloom and die regardless of whether I have paid enough appreciative attention to them, and if I have not, this year’s chance is gone.    Recently, I learned that a former classmate of mine has died.  I did not know him well.  I will not know him now.  Continue reading “Down Time” →