On the edge

I remember watching a tree at the end of my mum's road at this time last year. Its leaves were turning red and starting to fall, and the thought arrived in my head, "that tree will be green again." I get a little nervous about winter. I don't like cold, I don't like rain, I don't like wind. I have a funny thing about wanting to know that my favourite people are tucked up safe and warm with me when the weather is stormy, and it is so hard now when they are far away or nowhere at all. While I'm happy to work on looking at the positive things, there's a heaviness and oppression about winter that doesn't do much for my state of mind and is hard to shake.


But I've seen that tree and many others for my entire life. Winter will come and it will go, spring will arrive and we will soon find ourselves basking in the heat of summer again. Perhaps it will even fly as fast as this last summer has, as fast as the last three years have. So I'm going to suck it up, enjoy the cosiness, warm up my home and put on my new coat in the rain. I've got some winter events to look forward to and might even be able to create some more. Do pop in for cake and a mug of white tea.

*

It would be tempting, at this point, to talk about the seasons of life, and the hope of spring that follows winter. But, like talk of clouds and silver linings, that would be too trite. Kent's death will always be winter, and a winter that I will always live with. But I've been giving a lot of thought to the idea of life not always being as hard as it has been. Trying to make this life, the one I have here and now, a happier thing, and accidentally dreaming of a different and better life in the future. I've been messing around with hope a bit, and hope has been messing around with me. But I'm awfully scared of hope, and have told it before now that it has no more place in my life.

A mind filled with hope, rather than grief, can be a better place to live, for the moment. But my goodness, being hurtled off the edge of hope's beautiful cliffs is a dreadful, dreadful thing. So what to do? Stumble around the familiar rocky valley, or risk running along those high, golden cliff tops?