Our Kwanzan cherry tree is not a weeping form, except when it rains and its blooms are full. At that time, the heaviness pulls the blooms and branches down, closer to the ground, and it assumes weeping form. On a recent rainy day, the tree looked particularly downtrodden and sad, mirroring a stressful week at a time of the year when we’re usually celebrating. It’s ok, and I’ve expected such stretches in this first year after losing Dad.
Lately, he has been on my mind, and as much as that is a comfort to know he’s still here, it’s also a reminder of loss and sadness. This weekend Mom and I are making our first Broadway Mother’s Day weekend since he declined to the point where she couldn’t leave him for a night. The last time we were able to go was in 2019, so it’s been a while. When I think of that, I think of how long Dad’s decline was, and how the process of losing him was something that had been going on for years. There were some wonderful moments, and then there were fewer and fewer good days.
Every time I feel myself thinking I’m starting to be all right again, whatever all right was, and whenever I find myself saying, ‘I’m starting to feel ok’ a bad stretch will result, reminding me that he’s not been gone a year yet. Time does tend to heal, and my healing usually happens when it’s least expected, when I’ve finally accepted that we won’t ever be the same. There is a little relief then, and then there’s not.
My preference for structure and order has been challenged, perhaps for the better, with the process of grieving. I had thought, or foolishly hoped, that it would be the first year which would prove the difficult one, and perhaps that’s still partly true – but in that hope was the idealistic notion that it would only be a year. As much as I understood that was not how grief worked, I wanted so badly to have it be true, and part of me still holds onto that. In an effort to mitigate my disappointment when it doesn’t happen, because I know that it won’t, I don’t put off the sadness when it comes. Life, at its saddest points, won’t be bound or dictated by arbitrary dates or timeframes.
And so I accept the sadness, finding whatever beauty there might be here, the way I find beauty in the weeping of a cherry that normally doesn’t weep.
