What a Spring this has been. I’m sure you can see its been a couple weeks since my last post. Spring is generally seen as the coming forth, and new life rising from the frozen death of winter. This Spring has been, for me and my (extended) family, a new level of understanding of new life.

March 12, 2007, my Dad, Richard Crabb, passed from this life, in death defeating the foes that he grappled with. Only 68 years old, the legacy he left us is only now coming into view. I used to think all I inherited from my Dad were issues that I considered I would be better off without. It is only in his death that I have come to see there is a richness and indeed what many consider positive aspects of who I am, that are mine, from my Dad. I’m thankful to those who have shared with me, how they saw my Dad, how my Dad impacted them. You knew him in ways that I never did. How bittersweet it is to know those things…why could I not know it while he lived? Such is the nature of Spring, perhaps. The flowers that will bloom after the heavy snows and harsh winds of Winter will fill this valley with color we have not seen in years. Is it that the harshest Winter brings forth the brightest life that awakens in Spring?

My Dad’s death was not to be the end of it. April 25th, my Uncle, Dr. Francis Wall, joined my Dad on the other side. So fitting, yet so ironic. A giant chasm existed between the two men for decades. Though some level of reconciliation had happened in recent years, it is profound to me that little more than a month separated them in the final reconciliation. I’ve no doubt the passing of the two of them will bear fruit in the lives of their children, me, my sisters, and my cousins. It is a perspective that humbles me, and compels me…not a moment to spare in really loving those we are connected to, be them family by birth, or by choice.

I’ll be honest here, really putting myself out there for those I love, is not something I’ve been good at. Letting them in, really in, something foreign to me. May I learn to do that. To participate in relationship rather than to simply be there. Now, I think I’ll hit “publish” before I change my mind at being so frank. Besides. the washing machine is calling.