Another Season

I’ve been in my new home for almost a year. I’m not used to it being cold this early in the year. It was 40 degrees this morning. Of course, it did warm up some in the afternoon. Living in Tennessee, I can already tell the difference in the seasons. Growing up in Alabama, we do have four seasons but three of them involve Summer and maybe two weeks of winter. Here, there is definite, noticeable changing seasons. On the mountainsides, you can already see the colors changing as the temperatures drop and the days get shorter and shorter. I am not a fan of short days of fall and winter. Getting home from work at 5pm (not that I have done that lately) and it is already dark makes me want to go straight to bed when I walk in the door. The darkness seems depressing and empty. You can’t see much in the dark and sometimes can get lost if you don’t have something to guide you or you just know exactly where you are going.

I heard it so many times after Kati passed away.

“This season of grief will pass.”

“People are only meant to be in our lives for a season.”

Life is full of many seasons and this is just one of them.”

Grief is something that comes and goes and while, at first, it seems it may never end, it does only last for a season. But, as we have Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter every year, grief can be something that comes around again when you are in an “after grief season” of your life. When you lose a loved one, certain things can trigger emotions and the feeling of grief. Over time the seasons do get shorter and shorter but I don’t think they will ever go away.

Today would have been mine and Kati’s 12th wedding anniversary and some of those feelings have crept up in me. I haven’t really done much today. It’s Sunday so I have been kind of lazy. I decided that I wanted to go eat at Olive Garden since I haven’t eaten at the one here yet and it was one of Kati’s favorite restaurants. I decided a little late though and when I got there it was an hour wait to get a table. Everywhere here is busy this time of the year…. It’s that SEASON. When I was told it would be an hour, some of those feelings crept up. I really wanted to eat there for “our” anniversary, but I didn’t want to wait an hour to sit down. I decided to go somewhere else and eat. It was busy there too but I, ultimately, figured I would stay there and eat at the bar. There were four couples sitting at the bar when I got there. The one next to me was talking about what they were going to do with the rest of their vacation time. I just sat there and listened thinking about all the times, that Kati and I had come up here for vacation. Twelve years ago, we came up here the day after our wedding and spent our honeymoon enjoying the fall seasonal colors and all the entertaining things to do here. We came up here many more times for vacations and even came one time when it was snowing in January. That was another special vacation here as it was when we got a call from UAB that they had a kidney transplant ready for Kati. Even in that cold, dark winter night in January, there was light and that light was able to give me several more years with Kati.

As an accountant, I know about seasons, specifically tax season. This tax season was a lot different that the few that I had seen before. Instead of dealing with 100 or so detailed tax returns, I was dealing with about 4,000 less complicated returns. Not only was I dealing with that many returns and clients but now I was the boss…. Scary. Even worse was the fact that this was the first full tax season in the midst of Covid. Because of this, we didn’t allow anyone inside the office and just met people at the door as they came. Of course I didn’t get here until tax season was about to begin so I didn’t really have time to find some good part time help. That pretty much left me to be the one to meet them at the door to “check them in”…. 4,000 people… and I was responsible for getting all their tax documents and talking to them to get updated info. You learn a lot about people when you have to do their tax return. And when there are 4,000 of them, that’s a lot of information. I learned that, there were so many of them going through the same season that I had been through. One lady had lost her son in 2020. Some had lost a parent or both parents. Some had lost their spouse. One older man probably in his 80’s came to get his tax return done for him and his wife who had passed away last year. He was so lost and confused about what to do, what he needed and what was going on. I took his return out to him when we finished it and he apologized for being so unorganized. He said his wife usually handled this kind of stuff. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes for a second so I would be able to keep my composure. Not knowing what was going through my mind already, the elderly man started getting back in his vehicle and he said “you don’t really know how much they do or what they mean until they’re gone….”. I kind of lost it for a second when he said that. Kati was physically disabled but she still did so much for me. And what she meant to me I don’t know how to describe it but I’m sure a lot of you know what I am talking about. I’m just glad the man had his back to me otherwise he might have looked at me like I was crazy.

It’s been a weird year with everything that had been going on in the world and being in my new home with a new job. This has definitely been a season of many seasons. The joy of being able to have my own business. The excitement of a new adventure and moving to a different place. The frustration of dealing with complications of a pandemic environment. The grief and sadness that I still carry with me from time to time. Through all the ever-changing season I know there is one constant and through all the darkness I know where the light is and how to get to it.

“Jesus is the same yesterday and today and forever”

“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”