Tugging the curtains across the windows, I tell myself it is for privacy. Kids racing on bikes, neighbors walking dogs, someone crossing the street to retrieve mail, I am in full view of any who wander by. My slumbering beasts are disrupted, my Netflix binge is interrupted, the sounds of life outside of my cave seep through inciting my anger. Bright sunlight fills the living room, an invitation to chop down last year’s stalks from plants sprouting anew and I close the curtains. The kids have grown, the elderly neighbor has slowed, a new family is exploring the street and I close the curtains on them all. Inside my home, in my heart winter prevails where mourning looks like thick blankets and heavy sweaters, short days and long nights.  I cannot bear to look at the daffodils that haven’t bloomed since the bulbs were stuck into the ground outside my front window over 10 years ago but now wave in the breeze with brilliant yellow petals, pretending there is hope.  Closing the curtains in determined rejection of change and new life and the joyful shouts of kids in last summer’s tee shirts, I sink further into the chair to escape into old episodes of ER where people are dying and crying and always there is someone who is saved.