The Human Soul Revives*

I got married on the first day of spring, a day selected because it seemed so romantic to start a new life together on the first day of the season when the earth begins to bud new life.

My friends agreed with me: “How beautiful.” “How lovely.”

It all seemed perfect, starting my new life with someone who was my best friend. I was also aware that my anniversary would be in a month that stands alone, no family birthdays in that month, no other anniversaries. It wasn’t in the dead of winter or in a hot, humid month.

It seemed a good day, a good man, and we would be creating a great memory with a life-altering event.

What a lie.

Now it's an agony every year. On one hand, I love spring. I look forward to the season every year, though it’s much prettier in May. Now I'm also remembering the worst criminal of my life. Now I dread the day. I hate thinking about that “best friend.”

This is the dilemma that life presents to us repeatedly – the daemonic, the tension, the test, the love/hate situation – to challenge us to struggle through the pain to the healing to the victory. Not a sweet victory, necessarily, not always. Sometimes it’s just a victory of survival. Sometimes it is a renewed awareness of our resiliency.

In the end, it’s good. A bittersweet, diluted good, but still good. It’s good because the criminals will suffer – one way or the other – at least suffer the pangs of conscience. We survivors will go on, heart and conscience intact. That is no small thing. It might even be everything.

Spring is still a joy to experience after the first day is over. The crimes committed are “honorable scars,” not painful wounds.

Most of the time, and most of the time is what we live with.

I am going to try to pay attention to the spring. I am going to look around at all the flowers, and look up at the hectic trees. I am going to close my eyes and listen.

Anne Lamott

* Title adapted from the quote by Harriet Ann Jacobs: “The beautiful spring came; and when Nature resumes her loveliness, the human soul is apt to revive also.”