Today marks the first day of spring, bringing the promise of warm breezes and bursts of color, of longer days and more sunshine according to the calendar if not yet evident in my yard. I’ve always welcomed the changing seasons, arranging my concept of time along 3 month chunks, knowing whatever was going on around me whether bright like summer or dark as winter, only required my celebration or dread for a short time. Cold winter days and frigid nights were manageable for me, always the promise of Spring ahead as I crossed off days and looked for crocus to break through the snow. Fall brings the last invitations to stay outside more comfortably, bonfires keep us engaged in nature and breathing crisp air as it chills, the sun setting before we have even had dinner. I lived in California for a year, experiencing the slight changes the calendar brought, I was out of step and confused when leaves didn’t change color and the sun kept shining. I moved back home to Indiana where endless summers don’t exist and time is clearly marked for me. Now though, I want to stop the clock, stay in winter bundled under covers, wearing thick socks and heavy sweaters. I don’t want the calendar to move forward to a new season of hope and short sleeves, of children running through the yards and riding bikes. I’m not ready.

With each day, I wake to find the calendar is moving me further from the time when my son breathed and laughed and made silly faces. The moment he stopped doing any of those things brought a different invitation, a choice for me to keep marking calendar days or to stop seeing promises of new days entirely. I’ve fallen somewhere in the middle, rising each morning but dreading the move into a new season that my son will never experience. I’m dragging my feet into spring, leaving my heart in winter, choosing not to notice that I don’t need a coat as often, cursing the sounds of children playing outside games filled with running and shouts that carry through the air to my back porch. Losing a child has taught me that everything is now flipped, I don’t want anything that I used to relish. Spinning, tumbling through the days, I don’t seek out stability and security and warmth, signs of newness. I want my dark cave of winter where I can wail and moan, maintain my stuckness alone, less noticeable as others cocoon during the winter months. And what does it mean if I move into the next season, cross that line into the living without my son? It is clearly marked for me, I have to choose now more than ever to embrace the next promise or wallow in the one that was broken. Front porch wind chimes insist I hear even in my cave that the winds of a new season create beauty. I curse them too.

I heard my pastor pray over the congregation this weekend, saying words like Jesus and broken and new life that I have heard most of my life. Yet this man on this day said it and what I can only assume was the Holy Spirit who must have really wanted me to experience those words in a new way, shook me and woke me and altered me. Rather than focusing on the new life given through death, I really heard how He was broken. How He hung on that cross with a destroyed body and yet resurrection was just on the other side. Remembering that this God does know about mourning and breaking and so does His Son, I knew I wasn’t alone. I heard the story of wheat that had to be crushed and planted to bring more to life, I know about crushing and breaking and being buried under the weight of loss. I picture God in that in between time, when hope was just a breath away but the darkness was all around. He too knew that good would come but it didn’t change the sorrow of the moment. Newness couldn’t come without the breaking.

I have resisted the hint of anything good coming from my son’s death, a price too high for any joy that could come after to a mama’s heart. When news thatch of my son’s children received a Social Security check, I was filled with a deep nausea that has only mildly dissipated. While logic says this is good and ensures the children have college funds and a sure supply of food, I can’t help thinking that he was worth more dead than alive based on the checks. I want him instead of the money. I want him instead of a new day. I want him instead of anything and accepting the anything feels like I have turned my back on him, been bought off with daffodils and college tuition and trips to museums. The truth is that it was never either/or. It wasn’t a segment on the Price Is Right, trade in my child for a better future for his. Still, it feels as if accepting the calendar moving and one season siding into the next separates me further from the baby I carried, the child I nurtured, the young man I fought for, the man who left his earth too soon.

I’m with God in the dark days of mourning, He is with me, as I struggle to hold on to winter, as I celebrate that even if the calendar says spring it is cold outside and I need a coat. I’m not ready yet to move forward, each step into the future separating me from a past that holds my child. Time continues without consulting me, never asking if I am prepared for resurrection and buds on the trees. I’m not yet celebrating restoration and sun rays filling my front room. No Easter decorations adorn my front door, no bunnies or eggs grace my dining room table. I’m holding onto winter for a bit longer, even as it lets go of me. My son left us, he didn’t ask if we were ready to release him.  Still he is gone and I am left knowing just how little control I have, unable to save him or stop the warm air from coming. It must be the Holy Spirit whispering to me that it is okay to be broken, to be mourning and lost. One day I may again embrace the fresh scent of lilacs sweeping in open windows. Not today. Just as I cannot see through the fury of a snowstorm, I cannot find my path into sunshine with tear filled eyes. The seed that was planted all those years ago as I heard other prayers about Jesus and broken and new life, that was nurtured and fertilized with stories of others survival through broken times, that seed is pushing upward toward the light, willing spring to come anyway.

I hear you pastor, and Holy Spirit and wind chimes. I’m just not ready.