Saying goodbye to April is like watching the petals fall from the garden’s last tulip. It’s such a sad-sweet feeling. In case I haven’t told you, I am in love with springtime. It holds meaning for me on more levels than I could ever hope to tell.
This particular last day of April holds special meaning. For one thing, it begins the week when I will mark my 77th birthday, which feels, I must say, like a significant landmark. Someday I’ll share with you some of the rewards you reap for getting this far. One of them is an awareness of the preciousness of life.
When spring began this year, I made a commitment to myself to savor every day of it. One day, as I was stepping out into a soft, dewy morning, I remembered the line, “See every day as if it is your first, or your last.” It struck me, and I thought to myself that this could be the last April I will ever see. (You never know.) And how I have reveled in her days!
Each one brought new life, new warmth, new color, the songs of returning birds, the start of the parade of flowers. It was as though the Great Yes itself was sending a visible supply of fresh hope into the world. Every single day. And how swiftly they have passed! Even the cold and rainy ones, despite my wish that each one held three times its allotted hours.
Perhaps it sounds silly that someone could grieve the passing of a month’s worth of days. But that’s how it feels, and I’ve known my share of grief. I heard a story once where a woman caught her husband deeply sobbing one day. When she asked what was wrong, the man told her that he just learned he’d lost one of his best friends. The woman told him she was sorry he was feeling such terrible sorrow. And he wiped his eyes and told her his tears weren’t tears of sorrow, but of happiness. “Happiness!” she said, surprised. He smiled at her and told her that only now did he realize how much he and his friend had loved each other, and what a joy their friendship had been.
My grieving over April’s going is like that. I’m so full of the joy that April gave me that I’m moved to tears.
I think that when we lose loved ones – or even cherished possessions or circumstances – after the initial shock and adjustments have passed, the grief that remains is deeply colored by memories and images of the things we appreciated and so enjoyed, as if we were storing them away for safe-keeping.
One of the most comforting things anyone said to me when, decades ago, I lost a son was, “You never get over the pain, but it finds a special place in your heart to dwell.” The pain, after all, is focused on ourselves, on our loss of the physical experience of someone or something in our lives. We hold onto it because it’s all we have left. But inside it, like a thousand-petaled blossom, are all the memories of that precious experience and of all the adventures and secrets and dreams it brought into our lives.
So I say farewell to April with a heart full of gratitude for her loveliness, and a tear in my eye at her passing.
And tomorrow morning, it will be May.
Wishing you days touched with tender beauty.
Warmly,
Susan