Diaries I Read:
I've rethought the poem. Bear with my repetitions.
April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
- T. S. Eliot, "The Waste Land," 1922
I'm so glad that today is the last day of April. That I get to change the calendar page. That I won't have to look at that little box on the 3rd where I wrote "Trampoline BBQ."
This has been a long, hard month. A cruel month. A month in which we sometimes felt like life wasn't quite fair.
But maybe it's more than fair.
I could think of what happened this April as a mean, sick joke life played on us. The ultimate April Fools. That it was a stroke of bad luck.
But it was a stroke of God, not bad luck. Yes, God did allow this awful thing to happen. He does that.
But he also allowed B to wiggle his hands and feet in those first few moments when time stood still for us.
He allowed him to get out of the hospital bed and walk down the hallway.
He allowed B to be in physical therapy today to improve the strength in his hands.
I first remembered the lines above when I was thinking bad thoughts about April, thinking that April truly is "the cruelest month." But that's not really what the lines say. They're more about the paradox that is life and death. That is good and bad. That one can't exist without the other.
It's about hope. It's about taking the bad and finding the good: "Breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain."
Even as the calendar changes to May, our days won't look like they did in March. April changed that. For the worse. For the better.
This April, we learned a lesson about living. And loving.
Working at home - Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2004
Toronto - Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2004
On the way to Toronto... - Tuesday, Nov. 09, 2004
A Good Day - Monday, Nov. 08, 2004
Another letter - Thursday, Nov. 04, 2004