Hope in spring

Winter had been marked with so much bitterness literally and metaphorically speaking. John Windsor sighed with relief as he saw the once ice inhabited ponds come back to life. He looked down at his five-year-old son whose gaze was fixed on him all along. His boy’s eyes shone brightly, he looked at everything in life as though it were an adventure. John pointed his hand towards the pond.

"You see over there son, the once frozen pond is now coming back to life. That is one of the first signs of spring" he explained.

This was the first day after lockdown had been lifted, and it was also their first dad-son walk together. He had been a workaholic in the past but circumstances have a way of changing a person. It was always his wife’s role to take their child for walks but ever since he had lost his job, she had been forced to work as demand for nurses had gone up tremendously. The pond where he stood held a whole lot of memories for him. It was the place his father took him when he was a little child. This was also the same place where he learned to play baseball first. It was also the place where he had met the person he would call his wife and they fell in love. At that same spot he had proposed and she had told him that she was expecting their first child. It was the place where she had her last breath. This was the place that had all sorts of memories some of which hurt him and others that made him smile.

 The previous year had been filled with a lot of pain for him and his family especially winter. The pandemic had caused an unimaginable amount of pain. The whole world had staggered to its knees. People lost a huge amount of the world but the one thing that caused a great amount of pain was the loss of loved ones. Like the influenza epidemic which had come before it, this was had threatened to leave the earth with no inhabitants. John was no exception to those who had lost the ones they loved.  The void it had left in his heart could never be filled or at least that is what he thought.

People did not see how serious it would be when the first wave of a new and foreign virus in early March in his country, it wasn’t until the majority of companies started to cut down on the workforce. This marked nothing but the beginning of the world’s misery. A lot of people died in large numbers daily. John thought that it was all about bad luck for those who lost their loved ones. He didn’t know that he would have to join that long line with not one but numerous losses. In August of the same year, his father had been diagnosed with the virus. He had always been one with a fragile body, a little cold was enough to blow him off his feet. The virus was a whole new level, with his old age adding to the long list of defects he possessed, he barely lasted a week before he succumbed to the virus. It was a turning point for John and everyone around him, all along they had thought that it was a joke but the death of someone so dear to them had been that one wake-up call. Everyone had been greatly devastated by the passing of a pillar to the family, but none had been hit hard like John’s mother. She had never been apart from her husband not even for a single day for over fifty years. The pandemic had been able to tear them apart but she was not going to have. She begged her children to let her join her husband. Although it broke their hearts nothing hurt them more like the sight of their mother broken. With the permission of her children, she had joined her husband at the beginning of winter of that year.

John had hoped that this would be the last he would have to deal with death. His losses already had left him broken; he was no prepared for any more losses. Life however had other plans for him; his wife who was just over five months pregnant was diagnosed with the virus in the middle of winter. It was a sorry sight as she tried to stay strong for her baby; she had to deliver that baby that was her only wish. However, she couldn’t have it her way, with the growing numbers of diagnosed people she was on the long list of people who couldn't be placed on ventilators. She had tried to fight harder than most people could but this was a battle far greater than her. In the middle of winter, she gave up the ghost. The loss had left John in a state of turmoil. She had been the only woman he had loved and had hoped to spend his whole life with. This wicked pandemic had taken that from him and his hope of becoming a father to a daughter who would grow up to adore him. With every day that came he became more paranoid, he held on to his son as though someone would come and take him away. After all, this was the closest family he had.

"Dad, dad look over there!" his son pointed as a raft of ducks swam in the pond.

He watched as the little ducklings swam behind their mother, he knew that he had to be that mother to his son.

“I miss mom, I wish she could be here with us,” his son sighed.

“I too buddy but she wouldn’t want us to wallow in self-pity. Would she?”

His son shook his head in response to his question.

He placed his hand over his son’s head and pattered gently. Being with his son was enough to make him think about what life might have in store for him. Like trees whose leaves had fallen maybe this spring would bring life again to his.