Halley is talking about some things today and as I read them I had that, “hey! I’ve done that too!” feeling.
One of the things she talks about is the Palm Sunday church
service. She describes it from a view she has outside the church
on one of those long winter just turned to spring days. The kind
where there are still plenty of reminders of the long hard winter that
has been and sometimes may still yet to be even when the calendar says
that it is officially Spring. My last winter in the Chicago area
was one of those. We suffered the indignity of an April Fools day
blizzard that year. Those early springs are ones that are filled
with more hope for spring than actual spring. She describes the
effects of the big piles of snow that keep holding on even though the
weather is warm enough to melt most of it. These piles of grey
and dirty reminders of the deepest the winter had been able to force us
to dig to make our way through our daily tasks. It forces our
normally neat and organized lives to become more random and
different. The normal nicely arranged lines of cars parked in the
lot outside the church turn into a wild looking scene of cars parked in
all manner of different angles and arrangments, none of which seem to
have any organization to them.
She also talks about plam fronds and the rituals of the Palm Sunday
services. I remember as a child going to Palm Sunday
services. They were one of my favorites for some of the same
reasons I just described above. They were different from the
normal services. We dressed different, there were those special
hats the ladies wore, the practice of handing out the palm
fronds. For a young child these palm fronds are almost like
simple toys. Something to play with. I would try to imagine
where all these palm fronds came from. Were there palm farms
somewhere? How did they grow them in the winter when it was so
cold and miserable? I undserstand now where all those palm fronds
come from 🙂
She talks about driving behind a large vehicle and not being able to
see the road ahead. I have on occasion become so frustrated that
I would do as Halley did and try to pass just to feel more comfortable
and safe being able to see the road and traffic ahead. I have
also done the opposite and done my best to drive a little slower to
allow more of the road ahead to move from in front of the big vehicle
in front of me to to behind it. I have also on occasion purposely
tried to stop at a light that the big vehicle was able to go through
just to take me out of that situation. I drive different than I
used to now.
Finally the thing that Halley talked about the really gave me the “I’ve
done that feeling” is when she stops to take some time to cry.
Although I have to admit, as I have heard from many other widow and
widowers, that we do some of our best crying in the car rather than
out. In the first months I would never have been able to go
anywhere if I couldn’t cry and drive. The car was about the only
place that I could feel alone with my feelings. It was also the
only place where I had the time to think about things. The rest
of my days were spent trying to be a single parent of two girls working
full time. And as Halley says crying is one of the best ways to
release. Those first few months were filled with so much emotion
that it felt like at times we were exploding. Long hard crying
sessions were the only way I could find to release them. There is
such a feeling of calm and release once I was done.
Years later I sometimes long for those days of emotion.