The beautiful days are often the hardest…

Sharing a few short thoughts on a sunny, painful day

It’s a beautiful day – spring is in the air. Birds are chirping, flowers are blooming, people are out and about exercising, and mothers and fathers are pushing strollers along the streets. Amazing weather; but still it’s a hard day.

One may think a beautiful day would be easier, somehow. Yet in the coldness of winter snow or a dreary, rainy day, I look around and think “good – this matches my feelings. It SHOULD be cold, dreary, and miserable. This is right.” A gorgeous sunny day gives rise to different feelings. Sometimes simply ridiculous things like “how can the sun be shining when everything is terrible? Go away, sun, how dare you show yourself today! The nerve of that sun…trying to pretend all is okay.”

But really the heart of the matter lies in the fact that it’s the time of year where many of us, including me, emerge from hibernation and venture outside again. Especially this year, when the normal winter hibernation has been engulfed in a seemingly endless quarantine existence. We emerge into the outdoors for many things. To exercise. To do yard work. To simply enjoy the sun, the warmth, the beauty. To walk our dogs. To play with our children. To push a stroller…

I feel pointedly robbed of so much, yet today it strikes even more direct. I will not push Luke in a stroller like all these other parents. I will not play with him, like the children throwing paper airplanes and laughing outside my window even now. If we are somehow lucky enough to have another child (which I certainly don’t take for granted anymore), Luke will not be able to play with his brother or sister outside like I see these other families doing. He won’t ride his bike or kick a soccer ball, or even hunt for crawdads (or crayfish, if you prefer, Kelly) in the creeks like his daddy did when he was a young boy in North Carolina.

Luke won’t get to do any of that, or anything else, except live on in the heart and mind of his mother and father and the so very few people who held him, saw him, or even really know he existed. Still exists? I don’t know. It’s hard to think about.

I don’t have much else to say today. I’ve been keeping most of my thoughts and words to myself and my offline journal, when I even feel like I can put pen to paper at all.

I’m going for a run. Even though the beautiful day is hard to face, I still need to get out there. But I’ll be crossing the street to give a wide berth to those blessed enough to be pushing a stroller. And each time I do, it will hurt. But, really, no more than it always hurts.