Rainy Days

“The best thing one can do when it’s raining is to let it rain.” 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Rainy Day

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary; 

It rains, and the wind is never weary; 

The vine still clings to the mouldering wall, 

But at every gust the dead leaves fall, 

And the day is dark and dreary. 

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary; 

It rains, and the wind is never weary; 

My thoughts still cling to the mouldering past, 

But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast, 

And the days are dark and dreary. 

Be still, sad heart, and cease repining; 

Behind the clouds is the sun still shining; 

Thy fate is the common fate of all, 

Into each life some rain must fall, 

Some days must be dark and dreary.

This virtual journal has been left bereft of words for weeks now. Life seemed so disconsolate that I lost the energy to wax poetic or prosaic upon the mundane and muddled minutia that often times fills my mind with abstract thoughts and passionate positions.

It is raining in my life right now. The days are mostly dreary, the metaphysical weather forecast within my soul could legitimately describe a deluge of disconsolate precipitation. Longfellow suggests one might best approach the dreary days with a grim acceptance, rather than wrestling with the causal effect of rain, or fighting to discover a cure against these dreariest of days.

My sister lies in a hospital bed recovering from three surgeries in a month, recouping power and patience in preparation for the next chapter in her heroic defense against the cancer that lays siege to walled city that is her life. My mother lies in another bed, in her own small home preparing for an end, because no heroic defense is possible against the cancer that has now breached the walled city that was her life. 

My extended family bounce between these beds trying to find a place to wait out the storm, while I sit alone in my far off home pondering these dreary days that have befallen my family. 

If cancer was the only rainfall we faced this season I may indeed have chosen a sunnier disposition to face the dreariness of this weary rainy season. But cancer is but one saturated cloud in the deluge that makes this period seem more like a monstrous monsoon than a wet winter afternoon.

Wet weather or monstrous monsoon makes little difference beyond determining the duration and intensity of the rainy days. It is raining in my life right now and I’m metaphorically sitting indoors contemplating the dreary landscape that lies just outside the windows of my soul. 

Into every life some rain must fall. Thank God it doesn’t rain this hard forever. When the rain eases may hap I’ll find the passion and purpose to postulate and presume to speak knowingly upon the passions and the validity of some theological, psychological or sociological point of order we use to wrestle with one another in the sunshine of simpler days.  

Until then I’ll endure the weary, dreary days that make such a muted muse.