Dear Mom e-Letter
Remembering, Celebrating, Healing

Volume 2, Issue 5
The Promise of Spring
March, 2007

Dear Reader,

My soul needs spring. I delight in nature’s annual invitation to renew and restore my spirits with evidence of spring: sunshine and melting snow banks, bits of grass turning green, the arrival of the first robin, and the slightest proof that my frantic effort to plant tulips late last fall will be rewarded.

I would miss this annual rite of anticipating spring if I lived nearer the equator. Enduring winter on the prairie has turned me into a grateful woman who deeply appreciates days when temperatures hit the 40s, wildly cheers for days of 50s, and threatens to walk outside naked in a parade of one if the thermometer ever hits 60.

Spring on the prairie. It’s a promise nature makes and fulfills every year.

Promises are a critical part of life. Sometimes, in a dark spot in life, promises seem shallow, or unreachable. In the sadness of loss, the promise of healing can sound empty.

Christians have a promise every spring called the Resurrection. It’s sometimes hard to find amidst Easter eggs and bunnies, but it’s there.

After Mom died, someone promised me that time would heal. An empty sounding cliché that, like other clichés, becomes more real with age.

The letters that became Dear Mom: Remembering, Celebrating, Healing, were written nine years after Mom died. A journalist recently asked me why it took so long. I honestly don’t know, and while I might make a good case for a psychologist, I don’t care. I’m just very grateful they came out of me, because the healing was transforming. And like the promise of spring after a long, hard winter, the healing they created was so very good for my spirits.

Remembering the little things about your Mom in the season after winter is a great step in healing. Did she garden? Did she delight in seeing the first robin? Did she anticipate spring’s promises, and do you? Was she like me, buying tulips when they were really cheap, and getting them planted just before the first snow storm?

Celebrate the memories of your Mom this spring. I believe it may shorten the healing process, but if not, it will certainly bring a smile amidst the tears.

And that’s a promise.

My best,

Dee Dee