My son called it, “The Worst Easter Ever.” We helped friends, who lived just a short walk away, with their moving sale. After watching bits of their life disappear, we all said good-bye, then they flew across the ocean. Their home, once filled with children’s laughter, now stands hollow. The lantern by the door is covered in dust.

On another Easter, yet worse, I received word my grandma had a stroke. I remember that message, and others that followed, much later, saying she was gone. 

More memories of pain spring to the surface as my mind links one loss with another. I see myself as a child at recess, alone. Girls who once played with me are huddled in the distance. In the school hallway, a friend turns away as she passes, afraid of others’ reactions if she talks to me. 

Pain blisters and bubbles and I don’t know what to do. I’ve tried to hide it but that didn’t work. Festered pain, when it wills, thrusts through the surface like a volcano. It burns not only me, but those close to me.

I’ve tried to shut it out, choosing the self-imposed pain of isolation over the unpredictability of letting others close to me. But I still feel loss. And so do those around me. 

I don’t want to experience pain, but I can’t prevent it. I can prevent being ruled by pain.   

I choose to face my pain, to find a way to navigate through it. And when I do, I discover there are others who have gone before me, like Longfellow, the poet. His life is separated from mine by more than a century, yet his writing brings us together. 

My grief mingles with his as I imagine the dark days leading up to him writing this poem, the dark nights after his wife, whom he had known since childhood, miscarried and died.

As I read, it’s as though he, one who suffered deeply, invites me to walk with him. His words are intimate and into them I funnel my own ache. And I hear him tell me, in my suffering, I’m not alone. 

When I see that Longfellow turned a grief so alive into beauty, despite the loss that springs to the surface this Easter, I see a shimmer of hope. 

The Rainy Day

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;

It rains, and the wind is never weary; 

The vine still clings to the mouldering wall, 

But at every gust the dead leaves fall, 

And the day is dark and dreary. 

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary; 

It rains, and the wind is never weary; 

My thoughts still cling to the mouldering past, 

But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast, 

And the days are dark and dreary. 

Be still, sad heart, and cease repining; 

Behind the clouds is the sun still shining; 

Thy fate is the common fate of all, 

Into each life some rain must fall, 

Some days must be dark and dreary. 

This poem is in the public domain.