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May Day! May Day!

 


I don’t know how many of you awaited the month of May this year. But I know I did, and with grateful anticipation. There were many reasons. One was the ability to plant what I had stratified indoors and outdoors. Watching those items propagate and blossom into mini-trees. Planting seeds in my newly extended garden. As well as watching the perennial vegetables come back to life, once again.

 

The ability to shed my winter running attire, letting my body get some sun, as a slow tan would begin to build as it does before summer every year. One month closer to my oldest graduating high school. As I know, senior year can be a draining year for most children as they anticipate some freedom from the homes that they’ve know all their lives.

 

Another reason I’ve looked forward to the month of May is the warmth of the sun, and warm rain that gives us respite from winter’s end doldrums that may begin to occur by February 28th.  At least in my mind and soul it does. I so love to see the birth of new little maple trees in our lawn, surrounded by yellow dafs. I watch the pregnant deer, along with the yearlings of last June’s births. I marvel at it all. And I do wonder, if the rest of the world’s people marvel at it like I do. Nature that is.

 

I recognize my non-eternity of mortality. If you’re me, you wonder when this all ends… the witnessing of this life on this planet… What then? How can you save the world? Or comment on its beauty? Or hopefully gain gratefulness from afar? No one knows. It is the truth. But I can tell you about the haunted… The haunted flows of what might have been, come May. The May’s of many decades ago or now.  

 

I ponder these thoughts only today, as I am conflicted as to why I have been increasingly exhausted. It has been a long road to hoe for many years for me. And yet, I still look forward to the month of May.  But this May I am extra exhausted. This is not a complaint, but yet a realization. It is that, this month is a culmination of what may have been and what is not or no longer in existence. And there inly my extra feeling of exhaustion today.

 

Over fifty years ago I learned of the two deaths of my two brothers I’d never met. Every early May I began to be reminded by that, from my Mother’s melancholy episodes which lay at the edge of each of her tortured moments of her depressive bouts. I knew it was hers and not mine. It was her pain not mine. Only mine to render compassion in her direction when most needed. And that was a simple task for me. Because I know I am blessed with an astounding amount of compassion. Which doesn’t make me special. It just makes me grateful. And that too is a blessing.

 

So today, in my wonderment of understanding, ‘Why such fatigue?’ I realized my life suddenly changed in the last seventeen months. It was a drastic change, especially for me. And that the tip of the iceberg was in acknowledging what would have been my thirty-seventh wedding anniversary on May 6th.  So, now I remain wearing my wedding band to acknowledge the loss, yet the gain in some spirit that knew who I was for nearly forty years.

 

I ascertain there is always a logical explanation for how we feel, how we move, how we react. It is something of nightly dinner table discussions with my two daughters.  I am at the very least analytical. I am detailed in thought, as I question everything. Currently, my two daughters may not comprehend the depth of my thinking. Such as, ‘why would anyone go to any great lengths to think so tortured, so deep?’ There is a logical reason. It is to comprehend why we do what we do. It is to learn how to sit back and get out of our own way. This we need in order to remain productive and keep evolving so society benefits in our evolution.---Jody-Lynn Reicher

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