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March arrived, heralding the third season of the first year without Ryan. Somehow the arrival of fall and winter had seemed appropriate – the dying of leaves and grass; the shorter, darker days; the barrenness of the landscape, the cold rain – those things all matched my mood. Now spring was arriving and we weren’t ready for shoots of green; the budding of trees and the rebirth of the earth. The season of Easter with all that resurrection business did not match my mood. My son was still dead. He wasn’t coming home for Spring Break like all the other college kids even though it was on our calendars – placed there months before when the calendar of important dates had arrived from WashU, along with the tuition & housing bill. Ron and I shared the same “Spring, spring, go away, come again another day” feeling. Our hearts were still frozen solid in winter.

Ron recently read a book that described the seasons of grief like the seasons of the year. Fall is the season when your loss occurs. A pleasant, temperate time of year full of beauty until a sudden, unexpected blast of frigid air knocks you to you knees. Overnight the trees drop their leaves and the grass turns brown. In one fell swoop the landscape of your life goes from the beautiful yellows, oranges and reds of autumn to the starkness of winter. The winter of grief is the longest and hardest season. Like the winter of our earth, the winter of grief is dark, barren, cold, and lifeless. And for some of us, it lasts a really long time.

In March, 2008, just a little over seven months after Ryan’s death, we were still stuck in the middle of winter in our grief. There was no sign of spring anywhere in our hearts.