Heartbreak in Spring

I stopped alongside a construction site and cherry blossoms floated like snow flurries resting briefly on my shoulder. 'Delight' I thought to myself. I am getting good at this. A word that opens my heart to wonder. Damn this works beautifully.

Three girls in our island town died in a car accident last night. The car rolled into a gully, slammed into trees, and the most precious cargo that ever lived lay lifeless, entangled in the wreckage. One of the girls had been a classmate of my son. Girlfriend of his teammate in soccer. My daughter knew the younger ones. "Not well", she said, trying to place the names in the news report with faces of her peers.

I crumble for the parents. Could I survive my child's death? How can one possibly rise from that, blown to bits, leaving me with my dark shadow in solitary confinement, nails scraping at the walls to escape this malevolent and meaningless prison?

My heart breaks for the parents and siblings and friends and family, for their teachers and mentors and neighbors, and for that breeze that will not find their shoulders when the cherry blossoms linger lost in the Bainbridge spring.