I spent most of the month of February travelling. The first trip was the end of January for a conference in Washington DC which I extended so I could visit friends and family. I arrived just after a huge storm that dropped feet of snow followed by sleet and freezing rain. The landscape looked like amusement park fiberglass snow constructions – hard and smooth with a glittery sheen. The streets were thick with ice and very slick, narrowed by piles of displaced snow, and the sidewalks treacherous.

Following this trip, I went to Utah for my father-in-law’s funeral. Flying in to Salt Lake City from Texas takes a route over the Rocky Mountains. In winter the view through those small airplane windows is usually of thickly frosted peaks, valleys where rivers cut icy paths through snowpack, and ski lifts and runs criss-cross hillsides above teeming ski resorts.

But not this year. The snow was sparse, looking more like late May than February. Too much rock and pine, not enough white. Weather can be capricious. Fluctuating climate cycles seem indifferent to the havoc they wreak. Some places the wet soil groans under the weight of too much while in other places it is shriveled, cracked and desperately thirsty.

Life, too, can feel equally capricious. My father-in-law, for example, lived a long life – 93 years. He served in the Marines, raised a family, had a successful career which included the chance to work on space shuttle construction, and then retired and spent time hiking, advocating for environmental protections, and serving his church and community. It was a good life until the slow, cruel erosion of Alzheimer’s, which went on for well over a decade, his life piled around him in frozen drifts, his mind impassable. His death was a relief for us, knowing he was finally released from that implacable prison, our grieving having been done years before when he could no longer recognize his own son. His funeral felt like the long overdue remembrance for a man we had lost long ago.

In contrast, the loss of a dear friend was unexpected and unwelcome. Diagnosed with cancer a number of years ago, she was determined to shepherd her son through late adolescence and high school graduation, which she did with grace, joy, and time to spare. She continued to work at a job she loved from which she reluctantly retired only after the cancer recurred. Once again, her optimism and determination came in to play as she continued to focus her life on family, friends, and a collection of charming hats. Her prognosis was good. Her future filled with gardening, lunch dates, concerts, museums, and travel plans. Until, all of a sudden, it didn’t. She passed away the same week of my father-in-law’s funeral, a few days before her birthday.

Since I was already going to be in Utah the day of her birthday, I had planned to surprise her with gifts, flowers, and lunch at her favorite restaurant before flying back to Texas. Instead, I returned home, the unopened gift bag tucked in my suitcase. Ten days later I went back for her funeral. As such things go, it was good. For those of us who had been colleagues as well as friends, it was a reunion of sorts, a drawing together of parched souls around a well of tender remembrance for a woman we all cherished and whose absence we keenly feel.

The gift bag sits on my shelf now, the cracked soil of my grief not yet ready to give it up. Why some of us get more years than we need and others get far fewer is an unyielding mystery. It feels as capricious as weather, and impossible to predict. None of us are guaranteed a tomorrow. What we have is right now – this moment. What will we make of it?

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life? “*

*Mary Oliver, The Summer Day