The Spring Sads
A Season of Bloom, Loss, and Everything In Between
March is hard. Spring is hard. It is a time of complete paradox. I mean, life always is, but there is something about this time of year that puts it on full display. Actually, a lot of things.
On one hand, the thawing ground and warming sun give me energy and vitality. On the other, they stab me over and over again. This is the gateway into the time of year that reminds me most of what I’ve lost—Dad standing at the grill, Mom being the most sun-irresponsible human known to man, plugging away at a word search on the deck, both with the odor of Parliament Lights wafting around them, and the Red Sox game playing in the background.
It was the time of year that gave us all a little more hope and created points of connection that felt distant during other seasons. It also makes me acutely aware that I have no partner to share my joy with. My parents were those people. They were the call I made when things were exploding—but even more so when things were going well. Their responses were typically subpar, never quite what I needed, but that was the pattern.
And most recently, I’ve felt shame. Shame over the fact that I never moved beyond that pattern—that my parents were always my first phone call, that a partner never took over that position. That maybe—just maybe—if I had broken those cycles of co-dependency faster, this would all be a little easier. That it could be a little easier with someone by my side.
I’m tired of being joyous alone. But that’s one mountain I’ve yet to climb.
There is something about this season as well that catapults me back to taking care of Mom. Together, we moved out of the barren winter after Dad died and into spring—her with a new feeding tube that allowed her to watch the world wake back up. The hummingbirds and orioles were abundant that spring because I meticulously kept the feeders full so she could watch them from her window. I quickly found ways to use a plant hanger to hold her formula bag so that she could nap in the backyard, in the sun.
The spring air wasn’t too hot and wasn’t too cold. It allowed her to get outside—the place where we both felt the most nourished and held, the place that gave us the closest thing to “normal” we could get.
And then summer killed her.
Or she let go.
Either way, I don’t fault her.
The humid air left her stuck inside in the air conditioning and me stuck to her side, wracked with anger because all I craved was my feet in the sand. And yet, the rare times I got the chance, I was wracked with guilt—because I knew that was the one place she wanted to be.
And so here we are, on the doorstep of spring, in the month of March—the month that brought both my mom and brother into this world, yet now leaves me without them. And with it come the reminders of what I had, what I lost, what I never had but always wanted, and everything in between.
It comes pouring in through each new blossom, each ray of sun, each bird that arrives back from its winter vacation somewhere a little warmer.
It’s a season filled with energy and a pull to make the most of it—for the people who no longer can.
