In One Year

A week ago Saturday we got another foot of snow. The term for late snow is “sugar snow:” the reason
is that the temperatures edge above freezing during the days and then slink back down to their cold resting places at night: ideal weather for making maple syrup. As we drive down the softened dirt roads we can see the tell-tale blue lines crisscrossing the woods, lines that transport sap to the sugar house
for boiling down into maple syrup. Years ago sugar makers would use draft horses (the Morgan being the state horse of VT) to gather sap from buckets, a tedious, back-breaking job. Many people have stayed with the traditional methods and hang buckets, but larger operations have moved to the gravity fed, plastic tubing system.

This week, just a few days past the big snow storm, has been the perfect week for sap to run. I walked my dogs down our dirt road, watching the mud splatter up onto them as if in slow motion, and lifted my face to the warmer spring sun, every few steps taking in a deep breath of the new smells. Mud is the primary everything in the spring, including the smell, but it is familiar and comforting alongside the sound of water rushing. In a very short period of time the warmer sun has decimated the tall snowbanks to small, dirty white mounds, like tiny icebergs moving across the landscape. It is funny how in the winter this sixty degree day feels kind, gentle like a reprieve. In the summer we will grudgingly pull on a sweatshirt and look at a sixty degree day as punishment. Perspective.

March is the month of dirty snow, golden syrup and renewal. It is also the one year anniversary of my
father’s death.

My experience with grief has been minimal. However as my father became more ill I found myself more aware of the possibility of death around me. I would wake up in the night feeling fear about losing those aging, which is pretty much everyone, including our beloved Border Collie Sam who was about to have his thirteenth birthday. Because of Covid we were not allowed to be in the hospital for the three weeks my father was there until the day before he died. In a way it made it easier to pretend it wasn’t happening. I would speak with him on the phone and as his kidney failure worsened his confusion spiraled alongside it. We couldn’t talk about what was happening or what we both would be losing soon. Easier, easier.

I had expectations of what grief would feel like and I was totally wrong. It seemed if I wailed enough I
could wash myself of the loss. But the loss manifested itself in ways I didn’t expect: I would cry because I could not find the remote, I would be angry because my omelet wouldn’t flip, I would feel tired and heavy with something I could not name.

It always seemed that my mother, always busy, always moving, was the one who would be most okay if
left to her own. But now it seems that my father was the quiet pillar. A year in and she is still unsteady,
worried about her health, forgetting how to live, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Here we are in March again and, like the dirty snowbanks, grief remains present even as it recedes. Driving to our house in mud season presents a particular challenge for some people. The road has become soft, full of ruts and is unfamiliar. Our temptation is to pull toward the more solid side only to
find it give way and suddenly we are off the road. At this point our choice becomes to sit silently in the
cab and wait for as long as it takes for the road to dry out. Or, as I choose to do, climb into the back of
the truck, get some chains and figure out a way to pull myself out.