It's Spring. Well, technically, anyway. Fred's mom has tulips starting to poke up in her garden, and the local college kids have just come back from Spring Break. Soon, life will start to reassert itself, sending a green blush across the brown lawn outside my office window, and renewing the flowerbeds that serve our resident moose, deer, and groundhogs as salad bars. I'll be able to leave my bedroom windows open all night, and wake up to fresh air and chirping finches.
And, yet...
People that I care about are in pain, or dying. My favorite uncle is battling multiple cancers. My new niece is facing months of surgeries and difficult medical procedures. My best friend's eldest son is fighting for time against a brain tumor which has become inoperable. And an old family friend is in hospital, struggling to breath through a trach tube as an infection assaults his respiratory system.
Is it deliberate cruelty, that Life sends such awful tests to us in a time that should be ripe with new growth and fresh starts? Some days, it seems unspeakably horrific that the season is almost gloating at human suffering.
I have been reading a tumor diary posted by the BBC. It hits very close to home, given the similarities to my friend's son. But the latest entry there seems in some strange way reassuring, as though in the midst of the pain there is coming a Spring for the soul. And I wonder, how well I would make such a journey. I have been amongst the mourners many, too many, times. But how would I mourn myself, were I were in Ivan's stead?
Posted at March 23, 2004 01:46 PM in Wonderings