Winter's Promise (a kind of eulogy)

Winter finally fell. We're in the hibernation mode, where going anywhere seems to require undertaking a herculean task. Snow pants, boots, coat, hat, mittens. Strapping the whole package into the car seat. Off to destination; take everything off once inside. Bundling a child like this requires an amazing amount of patience and dexterity. Little tyke seems to enjoy all the fuss.

We're trudging through ice and snow here, with the sunlight glazing the ribs of clouds that skeleton dance across the sky. Ever the shiny coin, the moon hung low this afternoon on our way home. With these types of fleeting moments caught frozen in an icicle of time, drip dripping slowly to the movements of the heavenly bodies, I can hardly compete with words. My gratitude, mirrored in the graceful flight of the migrating birds a little late now, edging further toward their destination. I feel the same way: winter crept up on me, slowly, stretching out fall and summer. Refusal to adhere to the structure of things as we perceive them, my inquiry into the question of time, or the concept we're locked into, makes things slide along a bit differently.
For certain, it's not easy to hear difficult news. My own selfish clinging to the way things were, even this summer, and the sadness in accepting things as they are now, sometimes. When you are sad--of course you don't want to feel sorrow. You want to go back to a sunnier time. A more innocent time. However, the irony is so clear that the passing of life, the acknowledgement of this being what its all about, this transient coming and going, that life is never what it was even last Friday, let alone last summer. We can't hold on to anything. Not only that--we're often reminded of what is so precious yet so easy to take for granted, in the face of our ordinary human losses. We are all each in this form for however long our bodies sustain us, for however long we are graced with life's breath. No better lessons than the ones that are completely, across the board universal for all of us. Its in the shadow of death that we sing the lyrics of life.

Lucky as I am to be where I am right now, even if I find some things difficult to accept. Surrounded by my clan, feckless though we may sometimes, humanly, be! Do I want things back the way they were in the summer? Does my heart feel sorrow, a ripping and torn place where my child's namesake once lived, laughed, and touched this very spot? Would I taste the raw beauty of life without the whisper of death beneath every blooming seed? I place my heart in winter's promise. Spring will thaw. And then, without fail, there will arrive a new summer. Under the white blanket that masquerades as death, things are changing form. New life is taking root. To nourish us all. And then, like clockwork, real time will bury us all beneath. As new forms rise again. Skeleton ribs will dance across the ancient sky. Heaving in, sighing out, we rise and fall like our own breath.

Winter fell. Each snowflake, a bud of beauty. Petals of ice, flourish this snowy day. Life, bring us your ever-changing harvest. We are all still here.
Love,
Stacy