Pussy Willows in My Heart

 Photos of daffodils and fruit trees starting to bloom are coming to my phone from family in Missouri while I gulp back impatience to see our own up here in South Dakota, maybe a couple months later.

 Mom says lilac bushes are budding already--but then they were just missed by one of the many tornadoes in Missouri, the one only about 20 miles away in Rolla. A nephew sent personal photos of the damage from that one (and I saw later wonderful photos of the many people in the community who arrived on scene to saw tree limbs, clear debris, and just help neighbors get things back to rights).

I am indoors so much that I love to see photos like these from my sister. The last few days have been tough for me with side effects from the immunotherapy infusion I got Wednesday. Too late I read about one side effect being mood changes and emotional upheaval. My messed up emotions have run the gamut from feeling super mad to feeling wildly silly. Today I took goat milk up to our pastor and his wife, and the birds were twittering so cheerfully that when I left there, I decided to go across the road and sit in the cemetery and listen to the birds. 

That didn't go so well. The birds stayed behind at the pastor's house, and where I parked the van was directly across from a tombstone that read, "Mother, Anna."

No. That was not the place for me! I closed the van door and backed out of there in no uncertain terms.

As my daughter Rose would say (as she did last year), "I'm not near dead yet!"

So away I went back home where there was a meadowlark this morning, if you could hear it on top of the grey guinea hens jabbering and squawking as they do all day. And I carried in the groceries I had gotten after stopping to see where my husband and son were working with their crew in our own little town up the hill--replacing a sewer pipe for a town home rental.

I don't know how the guys keep their sanity working in houses like some of these where they were remodeling. Sometimes they are without electricity--or propane--or lights--or workers who just don't show up.

But they keep working. 

Saturday they worked at home--Jonathan on hours of paperwork and Danny on door knobs and other projects. I watched the livestream of the funeral service for Lorilee Kaufman Howe, daughter of Paul Kaufman (a favorite professor of mine back in college days) and sister of Louisa. I almost didn't watch it, because I was afraid I would feel too sad, but (toning down the funeral organ music that was beautiful but not the right kind of music for my family to be hearing just then) I watched it anyway, packaging a box of books someone had ordered and embroidering while watching. 

As I looked at the flowers on top of the casket, I noticed pussy willows. Yes, I was sure of it--one of my favorite spring buds. That was the best part of the bouquet. Right in the middle of the sadness, the funeral, my own homesickness for back east--were pussy willows. True, they were just on the screen, but I was grateful for them--a symbol of hope and new life budding right in the middle of sorrow.

Right in the middle of cancer treatment side effects,

right in the middle of a funeral,

right in the middle of all manner of heartaches and uncertainty in the world--

three or four stems of lowly and gentle willow buds--

symbols of hope--

pussy willows in my heart.