As for me, I try to like spring. Every year for 25 years, I have tried to love the new growth and promise of life that comes with spring. Here is my secret - I think maybe I am not so crazy about spring. That seems almost non-religious - not to like spring. Everyone loves spring and flowers, and dogwood trees, so I dare not share my feelings about blooms and Easter baskets.
Twenty five years ago, in the spring of 1986 - my mother was in ICU at Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte. The doctors said she had a twenty percent chance of survival. If I told you how many tubes she had running in and out of her body you wouldn't believe me. She had a football helmet - yes, you heard that right - a football helmet on her head to house all the many tubes. Everytime I could go in to see her, I did. In between, I would go outside in a courtyard and sit on a bench to pray that somehow she would come out of this and live to be an old woman.
That year, it was a beautiful spring. All life outside was totally in bloom. The warm air was gently blowing and there I was, sitting on that concrete bench in that beautiful courtyard, praying for a miracle. I cried and cried and wondered how I was going to make it through life without my mother. I was only 30 years old and I needed her. She was a wonderful, sweet lady. Inside that hospital, she was withering away, and outside in that courtyard, life was bursting in beautiful blooms - of every color in the rainbow.
Mom died, my heart was broken. Yes, it has been twenty five years - these things get easier in time. I have made it - I am a year older now than she was when she died. Spring reminds me of her death, her funeral, all the spring flowers at her graveside. I learned that we CAN go on when someone we love dies. I also hold on to the promise that I will one day see her again.
I'm still not so crazy about spring.