The first day of Spring came and went, drenched in a thick blanket of fresh-fallen snow.
Only the week before, we were basking in warm days, a whole string of them, our ears filled with the sounds of melting snow and the drip, drip, drip of sap into the buckets, while brown patches of earth began to emerge.
We collected sweet sap all through that blissfully warm week, and through the pain of midweek news that broke our hearts.
A bright little light in our circle of friends had faded from the earth, leaving behind a deeply grieving community, a mother and father walking the most difficult path of letting go, a path my heart rebels against even imagining.