~ by Martha Whitmore Hickman
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten.
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.
~ Algemon Charles Swinburne
Though we can scarcely believe it when our grief is new, there will come a time when what we remember will not be the so-sorrowful occasion of death, but the rich and happy times in the life of our beloved one.
It won’t happen all at once, any more than winter passes in one glorious sunny day that takes away all the cold and melts the snow. But one day, just as crocuses and daffodils appear one at a time as solitary harbingers of spring, we will find ourselves smiling (laughing, even!) as we remember our loved one. The lift of that memory is, for a while at least, far removed from the overriding sadness we’ve known. “Blossom by blossom,” memory by memory, the springtime returns.
Somewhere in the midst of my grief is the confidence that spring will come again.
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