Winter

I was asked to say something to her, so I did the best I could. "We're all here mom, we're with you and we aren't leaving. We love you very much." I don't think she could hear me, but her children -- my wife and my sister-in-law -- they could. So I tried to think of something to say that would comfort them. "We're really going to miss you. We'll see you soon." She took one last soft breath and the room went silent. I don't know how long we stood there before the hospice nurse came back in. It seemed, like so much in life, to have been too short. I felt like I should have said so much more.

The death of my mother-in-law hit my wife and me pretty hard. She had been battling Melanoma for a decade so it wasn't necessarily a surprise, but we were not prepared for it. Not at all. What was strange was that it didn't hit us right away. For months we went through the motions of sorting out the funeral arrangements, cleaning up the house, contacting friends and relatives, purchasing airline tickets, dealing with the estate sale, and handling all the tax issues that accompany this sort of thing. Shirley left us on August 1, but it wasn't until Thanksgiving that we fully realized that she was gone. On the day normally spent laughing around her dining table, eating the delicious food she had prepared, and discussing upcoming Christmas plans -- instead of turkey and pie and laughter and joy... instead, we wept.

2012 had marked the 3-year anniversary of her passing, and just like the previous years, it was the holiday season, not August 1, when the remembrance of Shirley's passing was strongest. I remember going for a ride the night of Christmas Eve. My wife was spending some quality time at her father's so I had a couple hours to myself. I had originally planned on riding out River to where it turns into Thornydale and then turning back. But instead I continued up Thornydale to Tangerine, over to Oracle and then back down to River. The detour wasn't added because I wanted more miles, but because I was out there thinking about, and greatly missing my mother-in-law.

River-Tangerine

I remember how cold it was that night. I was wearing a long-sleeved jersey and long-fingered gloves, but I was still cold. It was a quiet night too, with most everyone at home doing the Christmas Eve family thing. I stopped at a church parking lot on Tangerine to text my wife and eat a Clif bar. The service had just ended and so I sat, watching people walk to their cars and drive off. After a few minutes the chill was to my bones. I shivered, put the wrapper in my jersey pocket and rode away, disappointed that the cold weather would likely mean less riding in the coming months. I pedaled hard to get my heart rate back up, and was rewarded with the return of a little bit of warmth.

This morning I sighed when I stepped outside. It's starting to get cold again, and already I can tell that my beautiful wife is thinking about her mom. It will be Thanksgiving soon, and then Christmas, and then New Years -- and I know there will be tears in the near future. We all have seasons in life that are tougher to get through than others. It's difficult when there's nothing much you can do but suffer through it and wait for spring. I wish there were something I could do to fix it, but I can't -- no more than I could make the winter days long and warm. Winter will always have days that are cold and dark and quiet; days that will require arm warmers and toe covers and skull caps. Days that will remind us that a loved one is gone.

But we can still get through it, and we can even have a little bit of warmth in it.


We just need to pedal.