Just Love Harder

March in Pennsylvania is all over the place. The temperature can and does go from 75 degrees to 30 degrees in a 24-hour period. There’s fresh snow on the grass today, but early spring is still in the air. Farmers are turning over their fields, daylight lasts a little longer each day, and my yard is filled with robins who build their nests in my trees every year.

I am not a winter person. The promise of warmer days has always lifted my mood. But this year, like last year, the transition to spring has filled me with anxiety and dread.

Two years ago at this time, the entire world was on the brink of a global lockdown. People were debating the impact the new corona virus would have as we watched our hospitals fill up and our schools close down. I hold that memory in my body.

This year, as February moved into March, I would step out of the building where I teach and feel like I was back in 2020: the uncertainty, fear, and disorientation of the looming pandemic. It was in the leaden clouds and the heavy air. But that memory is just a cover for the sickening waves of grief that also begin rising this time of year.

The first pangs of grief feel like…. impending. Whatever impending feels like, that becomes my entire essence. As awful as impending feels, it’s the arrival that I truly fear. Because I know what memories are rising to the surface. I know what late March and early April feel like. If early March is a faint rumble of a distant volcano, early April is hot lava racing downhill and I’ll never be able to run fast enough to escape.

That grief and dread have ruined the change of seasons for me. Warm afternoons feel dangerous. New leaves on the trees feel spiteful. And when I see robins hopping around my lawn in the morning, I feel a ridiculous sense of anger. I’m literally pissed off at the robins. And I’m pissed off at the crocuses. And I’m pissed off at the world that is slowly moving back into a normalcy I can never share, because no world without my son can ever be a normal place to live.

After Ethan died, we spent so many hours sitting outside on my front lawn. Friends would come over to talk or to eat, or even to play video games on the giant screen we hung from our porch roof. I watched every leaf open up on our maple trees. I saw the catmint bloom and the butterflies return. And I spent evenings watching the robins hunt worms and build nests. By May, I swore I could identify the individual birds by their faces.

It’s still strange to me, the things that have taken on such emotional power over me. Some of it makes sense. I’ll never hear my phone ring again and not have a heartbeat of panic. There are songs I can’t listen to and places I won’t go. But even the birds have been weaponized. And I never know how I’m going to respond to the triggers. I may break down sobbing, or I may be filled with rage. I may just feel tired. No weary. Weary is a better word. Like I want to sleep for a year or two.

That’s the work I want to do now. I want to reclaim the signs of spring. I want to feel their warm light and promise. I want to smell the thawed earth and feel rooted. I want to look forward to the return of the robins. I want to separate the pain of my loss from the world around me. The only way I know how to do that is slowly and gently and one simple breath at a time.