When I used to live in the midwest, running in wintertime was like fighting an invisible enemy, namely, the wind. I went to college in eastern South Dakota, and I think the wind finds its playground on those prairies. There are hardly any trees to slow it down and it blows in a maddening way that suggests the very spin of the earth depended on its force. I would set out on a run with a goal in mind and find myself in great torment as I would lean into a fierce headwind, frigid on my face, taking my breath away. Or, just as awful, I would be pushed by a brutal tailwind that made careful steps on icy spots look like a strange dance ritual. One of the worst feelings was a false sense of calm if running amidst buildings, bulwarks of protection against the might of the enemy. That is, until I would round a corner and would be hit with the fullness of the velocity, nearly being knocked off my feet. The winter wind was bleak, cold, and piercing.
I've lived in the southern part of the United States for around sixteen years now. Those windy days only present themselves here as a symptom of a greater malady; a tornado or the outer bands of a hurricane. In these conditions I'm not usually trying to fit a run into my day. But the bleakness of winter still finds me and now, all these years later, I almost welcome it. I went for my first cold weather run a couple of weeks ago and found myself standing still, listening. The desolate gray sky sent me back in my mind to that east river land in SD and I expected to feel the wind pick up and put up a fight. But there was nothing but the quiet sounds of leaves falling; they had held on so long this fall and were quickly making their way off of the trees to gather at the ground.
As I stood there, the song In the Bleak Midwinter came into my head. This is indeed a bleak winter, if not year. A pandemic has ushered in the darkness way before winter skies cast their shadows. Perhaps most painful is the repeat insults to our sense of security: loss of social familiarity, loss of financial stability, loss of opportunities, and finally loss of life itself. I am not a stranger to grief, in fact I generally feel quite comfortable to pull up a chair with grief and settle in for the blows. But this year I have been a spectator to others' traumas in ways I hadn't expected.
In the early spring of the year, just as the towns and cities became deserted as people scrambled to suppress the spread of the virus, my nephew was killed in a car accident in Montana. Three months later, his great-grandmother passes. Eighteen years and eighty-nine years put to rest amidst a tumultuous culture of chaos and confusion. What makes this double death feel harder to bear is that this family grieved with me thirteen years ago when we laid Tell to rest in Arlington. Their pain is upon pain. And Ava: Tell's and my daughter, Orin's cousin, and Grammy Gray's great granddaughter is here in Alabama. The frank impossibility at the first height of the pandemic was in that she could not go to grieve. She hardly knows this family that is hers, and now they are dying. A raw wound that cannot be tended to. A bleak outlook.
About the time Grammy Gray died, we learned about another death that was impending. A close friend of mine is losing her daughter. Hospice became their new normal for the second time, with their second daughter. As those weeks and months have drawn out long and weary, here we are, praying she is nearer to heaven with each breath we take, and I am aching inside and out for the weight of grief that I know my friend is enduring. The piercing wind of the pain of death cuts deep. And we ask, "how long, oh Lord?" In the desolation of waiting there is bleakness.
This is where my mind was that day a couple of weeks ago as I stood still before my run.
"In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan.
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;"
This poem by Christina Rossetti is set to music in a long, hauntingly melancholy tune. And if the poem ended right after the first stanza, we would stay there: in a frozen, dark, cold as death world. But, as the poem warms up with the hope that is the very birth of Christ in the dead of winter -The people who live in darkness have seen a great light; and for those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light has dawned. (Matthew 4:16)- so we too know that in the bleak stillness of winter, in the chaos of a pandemic, in the darkness of loss, we have a hope that does not fail in the face of every affliction (Romans 5:2-5).
In the bleak midwinter, frosty winds made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.
Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.
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