Spring Heals

By Jane Greiner
Sun staff writer
After a long northern winter, everyone looks forward to spring. But spring is especially welcome to me this year because both my parents died this past winter. Though long expected, their closely spaced deaths left a hole in my heart, which has been slow to heal. Now I am nobody’s child; I suddenly feel like a 58-year-old orphan.

But spring rolled in regardless of my sense of loss. It is a force of nature that lifts up all life — infant, orphan, and aging — and infuses it with a burst of sap, energy and hope. I looked to this spring to bring me consolation and healing, and it is already delivering.
Each time I walk out into a new spring day, it is as if I am wading into a pool of warm breezes, bird songs, grassy smells, green, flash and sparkle. Such a palpable energy source infuses every living thing, including me, with a sense of wellbeing. Each warm day, each ray of soft sunshine, is another physical reminder that life goes on without fail.
One of my folksinger idols of the 60’s, Phil Ochs, wrote a song called “Changes.” A verse in it goes like this: “Green leaves of summer turn red in the fall. To brown and to yellow they fade. And then they have to die, trapped within the circle time parade of changes.”
Nature is a parade of changes, an unstoppable parade. I am as much a part of that procession of change as the Trillium blooming in the woods. With spring the sun shines, flowers bloom, birds migrate, people rake, turkeys display, bikers ride, and every one of us experiences, however briefly, that feeling that all is well with the world. In short: spring heals.