W.E. Krill, Jr. M.S.P.C.

Each year that passes causes me to crave the start of Spring ever more. This morning on my way to the car, I was intensely delighted to see many crocus and miniature iris had come up, overnight, between the stones of my front  walkway. In the warm morning breeze, it felt as if I had been reborn.

This past end of winter season has been a tough one. First the passing of an old hero of mine, my father-in-law, and the very next day, the discovery of the passing of a young hero of mine. The deaths were two punctuation marks of a winter that seemed longer, grayer, colder, and snowier than those I have remembered of the past.

Perhaps that is a not too surprising aspect of getting older: the Winters are harder, and the Springs are more welcome. As a child, I loved each season as well as the other. Fall delighted with Halloween and cool crisp and sunny days, Winter held the promise of days of sledding and ‘good packing snow’, while the virtues of summer to a boy hardly need articulating.

But this Spring, in this year, during this Lent, seems for me to be weightier and so much more welcomed than those in recent memory. The contrast of the sadness and distress I have felt in the aftermaths of the deaths of these two men whom I loved, as well as the recent world events of so much destruction and human pain and loss, with the onset of Spring is stark in its simplicity and beauty. On the one hand, death. On the other, life. That those tiny flowers today in my front yard can remind me that life always prevails over death, despite the apparent frailty of life is a miracle.

‘Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.’  ~Psalm 30:5