May Comes Anyway

Do you have a day, a week, a month, or maybe even a whole year that changed the way you move through the world?

Not just a date you remember.

A date that remembers you.

A season that seems to arrive with its own weather system, regardless of what the actual forecast says. A place on the calendar that your body recognizes before your brain has fully caught up. A stretch of time that shaped you, demolished parts of you, rebuilt parts of you, and left you forever walking a little differently.

May is that for me.

I was born on May 26. Our son was born on May 16. Our grandson was born on May 5. Mother’s Day is in May. Our son entered hospice on Mother’s Day in 2017. He turned 31 in hospice. He died on May 25. I turned 49 the day after our son died.

So, May is complicated.

It holds birth and death. Motherhood and loss. Celebration and dread. Memory and fog. Balloons and hospice rooms. Cake and casseroles. The joy of a grandson’s life and the ache of his daddy’s absence. The wonder of having been born and the sorrow of marking another year of my own life the day after my son’s earthly life ended.

Some years I hold that tension better than others.

Some years I can name what I feel. I can anticipate the dates, make space for them, honor them, talk about them, and move through them with some measure of tenderness toward myself and the people I love. I can remember that grief is not a failure of faith. I can remember that love is worth the ache. I can remember that the calendar is not cruel, even when it feels like it is asking too much.

Other years, I don’t want to hold it at all.

This year, May is arriving with a strange numbness. I don’t know why. I can’t quite put words around what I’m feeling, which is inconvenient for someone who usually tries to process life by throwing words at it until something finally makes sense. This year feels foggy. Muted. Like I’m walking into the month with cotton packed around my heart.

It is only May 3rd. I don’t know what will change in me before the end of the month. I don’t know if the tears will come, or if they will stay lodged somewhere deep. I don’t know if the memories will feel sharp or distant. I don’t know if I will want to talk about it or hide from it. I don’t know if I will feel brave or brittle or both before breakfast.

What I do know is this: the dates still come.

Whether I feel them or feel numb to them, they still hold weight.

And this year they come without my mom. They come while our family is navigating things I don’t want to navigate. They come while I’m tired in places sleep does not fully touch. They come while I’m still trying to understand what grief does when it stacks itself in layers, when one loss walks in holding hands with another, when old sorrow makes room for new sorrow without asking if you are ready.

Ecclesiastes tells us there is “a time to be born, and a time to die, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.” I believe that is true. But I also think there are seasons when those times are not neatly separated. Sometimes they sit at the same table. Sometimes mourning and dancing are not opposites. Sometimes they are both present in the same room, looking at the same photographs, eating the same birthday cake, remembering the same beloved face.

May is the month that asks me to sit at that table.

I don’t always want to.

I would prefer grief to be more polite. I would prefer it to make an appointment, use its inside voice, and avoid major holidays and birthdays. I would prefer it not to interrupt the month where so many beautiful things also live. But grief doesn’t work that way because love doesn’t work that way.

Love attaches itself to days.

Love remembers hospice rooms and birthday candles. Love remembers tiny newborn hands and the sound of labored breathing. Love remembers the last conversations, the last looks, the last ordinary moments that became sacred only after we realized they were last.

And God, in His mercy, does not ask us to pretend those things are easy.

I’m learning, slowly and stubbornly, that faith does not require me to clean up May before I bring it to Him. I don’t have to make this month inspirational in order for it to be holy. I don’t have to know what I feel before I come near to God. I don’t have to resolve the tension between gratitude and sorrow before I’m allowed to pray.

Sometimes the prayer is simply, “Lord, May is here again.”

Sometimes the prayer is, “I am tired.”

Sometimes the prayer is, “I don’t know what I feel, but You know me.”

Psalm 56 says God keeps count of our tossings and gathers our tears. I have always loved that image, but I think I understand it differently now. It means nothing is wasted. Not the tears that fall. Not the tears that will not come. Not the restless nights. Not the numb days. Not the memories we treasure. Not the ones that still hurt to touch.

So, I’m entering May again.

Not boldly. Not beautifully. Not with a ten-point plan for how to grieve well and keep my act together.

Just honestly.

I’m moving into May wondering what is waiting. I’m carrying the joy, the ache, the birthdays, the death day, the Mother’s Day memories, the empty spaces, the gratitude, the fog, and the questions.

Maybe you have a May too.

Maybe yours is a different month, a different date, a different season. Maybe your calendar holds something your heart still cannot fully explain. Maybe you know what it is to brace yourself before a day arrives. Maybe you know what it is to feel both thankful and shattered by the same memory.

If you do, you are not alone.

And you do not have to make sense of all of it today.

Maybe today we simply tell the truth: some seasons hold more than we know how to carry.

And somehow, God meets us there too.

Photo by Raimond Klavins on Unsplash