The Dogwood Days of Spring

“The flowers of late winter and early spring occupy places in our hearts well out of proportion to their size.”

— Gertrude S. Wister

I have a complicated relationship with Spring.  On the surface, I love the warmer, but not too hot days.  I enjoy the new growth and the flowers and the relief from months of rain.  I feel the energy of everyone’s mood improving and the anticipation of outings and vacations and days at the beach. I feel the promise of the season but can’t quite shake the unease that accompanies it’s arrival.

We moved to BC from Alberta in 1971 and I remember my mom’s absolute delight in the dogwood trees we found here.  It was a tender time, moving from all that was familiar, leaving my maternal grandparents behind in the house next door to what had been our house. We were a prairie family moving to the coast. I remember my mom’s delight in the dogwood trees being that earnest kind of, oh look, the world is still beautiful and there is so much new to discover that moms have when they are anxious to convince themselves and their kids that it’s going to be okay.  Great, even. Look at the mountains and oh my goodness did you see the waterfall?!   We’re so close to the beach!  For the most part, it was honest and authentic because she was a joyful person who loved life.

Fast forward a million years later when I was grown and had my own teenage/twenty something kids and bought a house in the snowy month of November.  She came to help me move in and then went back to her home in Arizona. We had no idea what might be growing in my newly acquired yard but we were excited to find out.  By the time I discovered that the tree outside my kitchen window was a Dogwood tree that would fill with blooms every May, she had died. I remember coming home from being with her in the last weeks of her life and seeing that tree for the first time, full of the flowers that she loved and knowing she would never see it, and the grief of that moment stole the breath from my lungs and any resolve I had to be strong.  That tree represented everything my mom would miss, that we would miss, everything that her death had taken from us.   

Her death was sudden and unexpected in that she was healthy and robust and from diagnosis to the time she died was 7 weeks.  We were only beginning to process the fact that she had been diagnosed with cancer too late for treatment, when we had to start dealing with her death. Those seven weeks from the end of March to May 12 were desperate and traumatic and stamped into the cells of my body.  Every spring as those familiar signs of new life roll around and the cycle of the change of season begins, I feel the desperation of that time. I wasn’t aware in the moment, of the signs of spring, but it was subconsciously absorbed into that entire experience. For the first few years after she died I felt anxiety, and an antsy-ness creep into my being even before I consciously noticed that the anniversary of that time was coming near.  I have heard trauma survivors talk about triggers but I never truly understood it until I realized that is what spring had become for me. Like something that was happening to me instead of just around me.

At this point I am feeling the need to minimize this experience because death and loss are common to us all and I certainly do not have any monopoly on grief.  I am sure what I describe here is common to many people who have had a similar experience. But I am also reminded of something Ted Leavitt, my friend who is a counselor has said of our need to downplay our personal trauma – “the heaviness of a burden is determined by the bearer of the burden, not the weight”. I would add that it is also not determined by another’s estimate of how heavy it should be or the fact that others have carried it too.

As the years have passed the frantic anxiety has eased as it does with the passage of time.  All the stages of loss have been cycled through. But the fact that I am writing about it now, while I wait for the dogwood tree to fill in and flower, tells me the experience is with me still and probably always will be. I’m preparing myself for their arrival even as I understand that they do not pose an actual threat.  My anguish then was that she would never get to see them and I would never see her eyes light up and her enthusiastic voice exclaiming, Oh Sharon, look how many flowers there are!  What I have now is the hope and belief that she sees them from the very best view above the house, and is delighted still. That now, just like in 1971, they mean that things are okay. Great, even.