On Anniversaries

The nurse is tap tap tapping my arm and yelling that I have no veins. She has no veins! My muddled mind counts 3 or 4 murmuring doctors on my right and several bustling nurses on my left. I see someone running towards me out of the corner of my eye; he is waving a piece of paper and shouting we know what it is! She has Strep A! Does he really say this? The IV team is here and they find a vein. It takes twenty milligrams of IV morphine to get me to lie down on the bed. What is your pain now? 7. My tongue rolls in my mouth. - March 19, 2012, approximately 2 p.m.

Today is the 2nd anniversary of this day, a day so jammed with awful, raw events that it doesn't take much to slip back into the memories of pain and fear I felt that spring morning. A Victoria spring morning like today - replete with nodding daffodils and budding tulips. The sharpness of their colours would slay me almost three weeks later when Eric brought me home from the hospital and guided me up our front path. I wept at the feeling of the wind on my face and the audacity of the yellows, pinks, and reds crowding our garden. I wept with grief and gratitude. 

It seems inevitable I suppose that when the season slides out of the grey nothingness that is February and spring makes it bold approach that I will always recall this day, this time. Only those closest to me truly know what that deadly blood infection cost me and the price I continue to pay. My anniversary is a private one. 

It was a friend's 23rd birthday yesterday. 23! Her grandmother died early in the morning. Her birthday will also now forever be the anniversary of her grandmother's death. 

Anniversaries - a mash-up of public and private, of life and loss, of commemoration and celebration in the calendars of our lives. Some are days we want to pass in darkness; others, events we hasten to bring into light. 

Spring.