Thoughts and Memories Brought by the Snow

Life, as I know it, is going to get better......I can just feel it all through my cold, weary bones. You see, it snowed out there today, and all of the ugly brown leaves that littered my unkempt lawn are neatly hidden underneath that blanket of snow.

I remember another little plot of land that had also been covered with newly- fallen snow in the autumn of 1983. Before that snow fell in late November, wrinkled, rumpled brown leaves lay scattered, along with bouquets of dying roses, over the grave of a little girl gone much too soon.

For 26 years, autumn has brought its own version of a grievous hell into my life, and I have survived both badly and quite well along the way. On the good side of hell, there has been my music, and my ability, they tell me, of "having a way" of successfully reaching the many students entrusted to me. This is something I own, something over which I have control, and should I not succeed in being a good music teacher, then I will have only myself to blame. For most of the past 26 years, inordinate success has come my way, and I had hoped for that to continue unimpeded. But..........

On the bad side of hell are the influences that have dared to rob me of my life, my livelihood and my very soul. Forces not attuned to the emotions of a mother's loss of her child, forces without a whit of an idea of a mother's grief, have forged a presence in my life that has become almost irrepressible in its strength to devour and destroy. What once was thought to be mine totally, had nearly morphed into carrion for the crow.

However, unwilling to surrender the remains of my being to unfeeling forces of nature, I determined that I would once again be the force in control of this mid-hell in which I reside. Steps have been taken to enrich my life, despite my long ago grief, and I continue to think of a better tomorrow. Lately, unforeseen circumstances lead me to believe that the road ahead will no longer be a path of unfilled potholes, but rather, a smooth, scenic roadway through beautiful mountains and bountiful valleys.

On this new journey, I am reminded by a poem I discovered copied into the scribbler of a little blonde girl, gone too soon:

Frost's in the air now.

All the trees are bare now.

Grey shadows creep,

Cold breezes blow.

Daylight is dying,

Withered leaves are flying,

Soon they will sleep under the snow.

So the dead leaves are hidden under the snow today, as are the past few years' travails hidden and sleeping under the snow today. Let them remain forever under the snow, even when the sun shines on a better day tomorrow.