My May Mystery

Hard to believe it's already the last week of May and I'm just sitting down to do a May entry. How has this happened? It's not like I don't have time. April Fools was a day on the mountain and today half my garden is planted and I've mowed grass three times. Mud season has come and gone and all the migrating songbirds have arrived to fill the woods with music. The lilacs are in bloom and leaf-out is complete. The transition is over and we are rolling in to early summer. Today is a damp cold rain and the wood-stove is cooking. The thirsty young plants are soaking up the rain and I feel the same about sitting in the warmth of the living room and writing. I seem to have a thirst for putting thoughts on paper. Sometimes I go overboard and sometimes I go so long without that I don't recognize that I'm even thirsty...until I start and I sigh and I feel a slow comforting hand gently holding me. May is a challenging month for me. My head is all over the changing temperatures and the hope of a great growing season and my body thrives on the increased activity and working outdoors. The arrival of the birds is always so thrilling. A great void inside me is suddenly filled with the joy of watching the birds do their courtship dances. The hummers bring back a feisty energy full of passion and competition...flashing iridescence. The ever present possibility of seeing a rare visitor or a bird happening gives a quality of wonder and a daily potential of the unexpected. Not to mention that the woods and the yard are unfolding their layers of spring green and every day new blossoming delights emerge. That is the great side, the heady, fragrant , sweet and drunken side of May. It is easy to keep my thoughts focused on the fertile birth of a new growing season and the hope of a future harvest .

The heart side of May is a different story...it is a complex fabric of deeper and more somber feelings. The higher my thoughts soar on the wild new beginnings, the deeper my heart seems to plunge it's awareness of lives lost. No matter how hard I try to buoy myself up and fortify myself against my potential for a deep May sadness, the more surprised...the more mystified I am by the sudden gravity of my memories. My sister Beth died on May 21st after 4 and 1/2 years lying in a hospital bed. She had so many meetings with Death over the course of those years that I felt certain I could handle the actuality of her passage once it finally came. But when it came, I felt stunned by the loss and the finality of the moment. Like becoming a mother...nothing prepared me for the moment to come. It was only through walking the path that I have come to know the truth of deep feeling...to open the heart a soul must be willing to walk through great joy and brave enough to weather great sorrow because joy and sorrow are irrevocably connected. They are one and the word that encompasses them both is LOVE. Every spring I seem to rediscover my original discovery and every single time I pass through May, I am astounded by this earth-shattering truth. It's been 24 years since she died. She was only alive for 26 years but every May I take the same walk...as though for the first time. I think of my friend who lost her daughter at the tender age of 15. Grief doesn't really ever go away. Can we but learn to recycle the grave and deep sadness, the salty tears and the throat lumps like egg shells and avocado seeds in the compost pile...perhaps that is all we can hope for...that our life's losses become fertilizer for our present flowers and fruits as long as our lives are sustained.

Memorial Day has always been a very sad day. I weep openly at the Memorial Day trumpeting of Taps...and since becoming the mother of 2 boys I weep copiously and out loud. My father, my uncle and all men who have served the country...how do you think their mothers felt? Sure they say proud. That is the public mask. It is the socially expected presentation for a woman who loses her child. Beneath the defense of "Proud" is a sense of great waste. ..a bitter taste of lives wasted when considering the cyclical nature of war. To lose a child is permanent. We are ripped open by loss...our hearts laid open by love.

There is great mystery in deep joy and deep sadness because both are the paths we walk in Love. I think of both when I pick flowers in the May rain. Loss has put my heart in touch with the eternal blossoming of love and I know it because my sadness reveals the great joy given to me by my sister's presence. Her life continues to fertilize my heart's garden with exquisite blossoms of wisdom and I am eternally grateful.