Such Sadness, Such Beauty in Everyday Ramblings

The chickadees come to my feeders late in the day, both black capped and chestnut. The brilliant blue scrub jays with their gray eyebrows come at dawn and compete with the scruffy brown squirrels that proliferate around here for peanuts during the crow flyover as masses of crows move from their roosting areas out into places where there is more food available.

The house sparrows chatter into the evening light picking up scraps the mentally ill and addicted folks that loll on the downtown sidewalks playing harmonicas and laughing at their own jokes leave.

There is a niche for each.

Right now there are blossoms all over the sidewalks and street depending on the trees as the fresh new leaves push out and begin to unfurl.

Today there are blossoms on the pear trees out back where yesterday there were only buds.

Out in the cold damp pewter light our local world unloosens its strictures and sighs in relief.

Mrs. Sherlock lost her older dog Judy on Friday. She was 17 and fading but their lives have revolved around her habits and care all this time. She was the smart one, a happy black lab, but troubled with arthritis and unwieldy but harmless growths these last years.

On Saturday as I sat outside the Starbucks closest to my gym with Frida while Mrs. Sherlock went in to use the facilities, Frida cried when she left. All this time, all these walks and sit down talks with coffee and tea over the last few years, Frida has never done that before. Her world is changing. Mr. Sherlock deep into radiation and chemo doesn’t smell the same, or taste the same or move the same and Mrs. Sherlock fills in the gaps.

Mrs. Sherlock does still make her husband put the chickens to bed, trying to keep some type of recognizable routine as his world becomes medicalized and shrinks inward.

And then this terrible shock to all that one of my most loyal students, a member of the Adult Ed committee at the church was sharing last Monday that her 15 year old grandson needed to go to the hospital where they were vacationing in Salt Lake City and they thought it might be Strep or Mono but weren’t sure.

Then two days later she emailed to say it was leukemia and I was reassuring her that they were doing amazing things with blood cancers in young people these days.

On Friday he died.

I have met his mother, my student’s daughter and she is a lovely lovely person and no one ever under any circumstances should go through this. One of my other students was telling me after class that this boy had been in the Sunday School class he taught 11 years ago.

The memorial service is this coming Friday.

We all held space for my student yesterday, both literally, (she has a favorite spot) and in our hearts at the end of class. The suffering, the shock…unimaginable.

So here in this unfolding there are endings too.

The blossoms are still beautiful as here on Easter Sunday in the afternoon the light was transcendent.

What else do we have, at times like these, but each other.

May we cherish our time together.

Last updated April 04, 2018