these are the days: february

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These are the days of sunlight, at last, streaming through the windows in the morning—after eighty days, some estimated, without the sun showing its face here. Until you’ve lived through eighty days without the sun I don’t think you can fathom how suffocating and dire the world becomes, nor how life-giving and joyful the privilege of sun on skin really is. The first week of February, when it finally came out from behind the gray blanket of clouds, I wanted to cry from pure relief, and I haven’t taken a minute of it for granted since. There is nothing so important that it can’t wait for a few hours while I sit outside in the sun.

These are the days of waiting eagerly for more flowers to pop up—my crocuses are in full swing, and the hyacinths and daffodils are close on their heels. I feel starved for every bit of color and light and joy the world can spare me and if I thought that sleeping in the garden next to my plants would make them grow faster, I’d do it. Every leaf that emerges is hope.

And especially, these are days of quiet. Even inside my mind, which is usually buzzing with new ideas or goals or processes, it is quiet—because nothing else seems reverent. I wish we still followed the old customs of mourning, in some ways, because the plunge back into life the day after a death seems not only horrifically inappropriate but exhausting beyond description. So many days I’ve wished I could respond to a call or a text or an appointment or a reminder with “Sorry—in mourning until further notice.” As much as life must stubbornly go on, it feels like something somewhere must cease, because a life that shaped my entire world is gone.

Suggested Thinking