Footprints and Grief

What we lose of our grief in Time

It snowed earlier this week and it's been so cold the snow has stayed. This morning it is snowing again and will be staying a while as well. I’m usually sitting in a big comfy chair looking out on our deck as the jays and squirrels, tufted titmouse and cardinals come to grab the peanuts I put out.  This morning though, I'm sitting in the living room in a wingback chair turned to look out the large windows. This gives me a much broader and different view.

A change in perspective can be revealing.  I see the snowfall for a distance of about a half a mile. It makes all the trees seem lighter as the white gets deeper the farther I can see.  The tower for the airport behind us has mostly disappeared into a ghost of its usual imposing self. Nearer, I can see more of the yard and bird feeders both on the deck and the lawn below.

I also see the footsteps in the snow my husband made when he goes to the back of the yard and tends to the feeders and birdbath. I noticed them Tuesday and appreciated the path he took around a depression in the grass that could trip him up. Because I have this different perspective the current snowfall is softening the footprints, blurring the lines and the path. Soon they will disappear altogether.

I’m very conscious of my own grief these last few days. Anticipatory grief as my living parent is mentally slipping away and my dead parent isn’t here to ask things and tell me I’m doing a good job, the best I can. And watching this snow I’m struck by the footprints. People and life experiences we’ve lost are like the footprints in the snow. We can see and recognize the path that person or time made on our lives, on our hearts. And this snow is Time. As time goes on those prints and trails and pathways get blurred and all but disappear in our day to day. 

And yet there are gifts in this change of perspective as well.  With this different vista I see the trees and the gradients of white in the distance and I connect with the stillness. And I’ve spotted the elusive red fox in the field not one but three times today. Twice it came up very near the yard and I got a good look at its beautiful fur and elegant gait across the snow. 

In the stillness I’ll take the grief and invite it in, because pushing it away takes so very much energy. And I’ll welcome the memories and pathways even as they blur with time. They are both gifts and part of my journey and the footprints I leave here, with you.