View From a Prairie Home

by Hege Hernfindahl, Columnist

I love all seasons of the year and most months. But the months that kind of transition into another season, the months where one season is fading and another has not yet started make me yearn for the next season, the next month. Erland used to tease me when he read about how I didn’t like March. Not liking it because winter has not yet lost its grip and is getting old. The landscape is usually dirty in March. Remnants of the pure white snow usually lay in dirty,  hard piles in March. This March, after a non-winter, the dead grass and the many remnants of the winter winds that blew in dirt are totally uncharming even on my beloved prairie.

Erland’s teasing about me not liking March was because his birthday was in March. His birthday when we would celebrate him starting another year of life. Birthdays. So hard after losing someone.

Because of this, we have started to leave in March around the time of his birthday. To help make it less painful. To help us grieve in a place where there are no painful memories of happier times. And living as we do in the midst of uncharming March here in the northland, we go south.

Last year, we went to North Padre Island in Texas. Here, there are endless beaches, empty except for the many seabirds and the sounds of the endless waves crashing to shore. Padre Island is the largest barrier island in the world and we had chanced landing where there were no people, only beautiful and wild nature to absorb our bottomless grief of losing our son.

But, we don’t like to go to the same place twice. The second time would never be able to mirror the perfect experience of our first time. So we picked St. Thomas, a US Virgin Island with the Caribbean ocean cascading its turquoise waters onto sugar sand beaches and a direct flight from Minneapolis.

The day before we left, I caught a severe cold, but we decided that sunshine and lazy days would cure this in an instant. We were wrong. I got sicker and sicker until all I could do was sit on one of our condo’s uncomfortable chairs and miss being at home.

Our condo was right next to the ocean. The landscape was verdant and the bougainvilleas were all in glorious bloom. We had miraculously found a quiet corner of the island and the grocery store was just a short distance away. But the condo was small and I was too sick to enjoy the many beaches which Grant brought us to, courageously driving on the left side of the road up and down the many steep hills with numerous hairpin curves and no shoulders.

Of course, Grant also caught the virus and we were a miserable chorus of coughing through the days until we finally could make the eight hour flight home. I had dreaded the flight, envisioning us coughing into our masks, but the trip went surprisingly well.

And home has never felt better. The grass is still yellow, that is true, but the air is filled with sounds of the many returning birds. Our house has many rooms if a person feels too sick to go outside. We have plenty of comfortable chairs, which I now really appreciate. And as I sit, still coughing, I feel better just being home and having survived yet another birthday without my beloved.