On being blue

So, it is not green here yet. March insists on layering this landscape with a dull and pestering brown. The trees are sticks and bones, the grass flat and crunchy, and spits of dust hover above the sidewalk as we walk by. In some ways, I appreciate its lackluster presence, because it is acting like a companion, a mirror. It is being kind in its holding back. There is nothing ostentatious in its rebirth. It knows that rather than seeing green, I am seeing blue. The kind of crawl-back-under-the-covers blue that feels like rest but wakes like stone.

Stage 4 cancer; that’s the diagnosis for my father-in-law. Deep fear and sadness is the diagnosis for my husband and his mother. Worry is the diagnosis for my children. I am fumbling somewhere in between, throwing off stones where I can before the next rock rolls across our path. I am in constant search for words that are right or words that are enough. I live rooted in optimism, because hope has always felt like a friend. And then more bad news comes, and I think, how foolish I am.

So many I’s. That’s the thing about grief. It is not about us, it’s not about me, it’s about one person. It is about what he will not be able to do, what he will miss seeing, what he hopes for, and what he feels. Yet, it is so easy. So easy to be the one instead, feeling anger, feeling disappointment, feeling blue. After two years of a pandemic, the world wants to spring break and smile in the glow of the sun. And I want to shout back to them and say, don’t you see though?

And still the only way is through. To sit with the feels. Accept the sadness. Voice the shame in not being capable of smiling for others. Recognize the I. Give words to the fear. Be self absorbed, be sad, be disappointed, be mad, be honest in my shortcomings.

On the other side is gratitude. This I know to be true, because it is always there, waiting to be unearthed. On this side, March is drab hues and cold breath, but on the other there are buds and stalks of green. One day soon, I will go to scoop up piles of trodden winter leaves from the garden out back, and it will catch my breath. It gets me every time, the vibrant green pokes that appear beneath. And I will smile and show the kids, because I do that each time, like it shouldn’t have happened but it miraculously did.