This is a piece I wrote in the spring of 2017 approximately a year after both my husband’s father and my father died within three weeks of each other. As we approach Passover and Easter, in the midst of this global pandemic, we now encounter a period of grieving for our previous lives with all their freedoms. Yet, like the year of grieving, it is a time of introspection and quiet and a chance to recalibrate how we live and reflect on how we are both separate and interconnected as human beings. As with the prescribed period of mourning, may we come out of this and awaken once again to the Spring of our lives. This too shall pass.

originally for my father and father-in-law

Our Fathers who art in heaven,
hallowed be your names.
I have given myself fully
to the sacred year of mourning.
Completed the physical and emotional tasks
required of me and for me.
With these unveilings, I open my eyes
to the Spring wonderment of my life.
Like recitation of the Sh’ma each Friday,
hand over eyes renewing faith,
showing trust and complete surrender,
I now open those same eyes
to all the possibility and opportunity.
To the people there are to love
and the life there is to lead.
I have done my due diligence.
I have fully grieved and
thus marks the spot to turn a corner
to set myself free.
To look to the color and light and future,
as we enter this time of Easter and Passover,
cleansing feet and cleaning homes.
A time of rebirth and Spring.
Dying and Resurrection.
Candlelight turns to sunlight.
Freedom of those who would be slaves and
from the constraints of our minds and hearts.
Spring giving us freesias, tulips, daffodils and crocus
where thoughtful gardeners remembered
to plan and to plant Fall bulbs.
Spring reminds us that
we reap what we sow and
that the preoccupation of the Fall
shows in the absence of what
could have been in the Spring.
I will not regret,
I will tend my garden and
try to notice and embrace
each season as it comes … and then let it go again
as one passes to the next.