March

Hey there-

I don't like March.

It has never been my favorite month. March has always seemed so long to me, longer than any other month somehow. The weeks stretch out with no holiday weekends. And by March I am soooo ready for winter to be over, but spring is nowhere close to arriving here in the Midwest.

The only time I have found March palatable was when Bob and I were living in Portland. In Portland March had the white petals of the dogwood trees, the pink blooms of the azalea bushes, the rich reds of the tulips, some yellow from late blooming daffodils, delicate purples of the early iris', plus the varied greens from all the ferns unfolding from the damp earth. In Portland March was an array of colors. Then we moved back to Milwaukee and March became brown and grey once again.

To make matters worse Bob was diagnosed in March, and then he died the next March, making March even more bleak.

Now it is March again. Another mourning march. I can recall so vividly the events happening exactly six years ago on this date. Last night was the night that I called my sister, Anne, the one who was going to come "when things got bad". I had my last lucid conversation with Bob that same night, just before I made the phone call. I was apologizing to him for following him around the house like a toddler. I tried to explain how worried I was that something would happen to him and I wasn't going to be able to handle it.

"Don't worry, Renie, you will," he told me.

Bob spoke so clearly, with that calm, thoughtful tone of his. He looked me straight in the eyes when he said it and I knew he was talking about more than just the next few days.

Well, it's six years later, and here we are, another March, alive and well. I severly doubted his wisdom at times, but Bob was right, as he usually was, I handled everything, just barely sometimes, but I handled it.

No worries. (HA! Well, I am glad he had none anyway)

It takes a whole lot of patience and confidence that there will, indeed, be new life coming out of that kind of darkness. I am thankful for the confidence Bob had in me, and I am thankful Bob died in March, when all the new life forcing it's way out of the cold dark earth is a reminder of the resilience and the undaunted possibility of the human spirit.


Thanks for checking in-

Irene