Summer of 22
For all intents and purposes, the end of August marks the end of summer. I’d actually prefer fall start in the middle of August, but alas this year the weather has not agreed with me and something just doesn’t feel right about busting out pumpkin decor while it’s still 30+ outside. I am not, nor have I ever been, a summer person. I’ve tried, really I have, but it’s when those first cool mornings and days where the air is crisp enough to wear a sweater roll around that I feel my soul come alive. I have jokingly said the person I aspire to be has created her entire personality around fall.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Because before I run head first at full speed into fall, summer has to take its dying breaths before it slips away for another year. And if I’m being honest, I’m not mad about it being over and not only because I am about as heat tolerant as a penguin.
Summer 2022 has been brutal. If I’d made a list of everything I expected or hoped to happen during this summer, what has happened has been the complete opposite. More diagnosis’, more time spent in hospitals, more broken dreams and shattered plans, and a whole lot of change. Contrary to how my entire life has operated thus far, I am not a fan of change (except the kind where summer turns to autumn).
Mary Oliver has a poem, and she says “Someone I loved gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand this, too, was a gift.” They say there are years that heal you and years that reveal you, and I think the same way about seasons. As much as I desperately wish this summer was one of healing, it was more about revealing, about sifting through the remains of my life and finding out where I stood in the midst of it all.
Here’s what happened in the summer of 2022: We lost a lot. Dreams, plans, loved ones. I spent a lot of time in hospital waiting rooms and emergency rooms, only to reveal that what was broken cannot be easily repaired, and in fact I am still waiting. I don’t know how long I will be waiting, and maybe that’s scariest of all. I spent a lot of hours alone due to the chaotic nature of my husband’s job, which was both enlightening and frustrating. I questioned myself, a lot. I went to therapy a lot. I worked on some really cool projects, including getting to interview so many amazing transplant recipients, organizations and physicians, and spent hours connecting with and supporting those on their chronic illness and transplant journeys. I made mistakes, lots of them. We spent a weekend in the mountains, my entire family together, which is always the highlight of my summer. My parents moved, our house grew and then shrunk in terms of occupancy.
In the grand scheme of my life, I probably won’t look back and remember this summer as being particularly momentous. But that’s ok. We live in a glorified social media culture where if everything isn’t insta worthy did it even really happen. It reminds me of one of my favourite books by one of my favourite people - The Still Point of the Turning World by Emily Rapp - where she talks about losing her son to Tay Sachs, and she has this line where she says “we spent a lot of time on the couch.” There’s so much pressure to make life beautiful and “worth something” but it’s ok if all you did was sit on the couch too. You were there. Instagram aesthetic lives aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.
So I guess if I was rounding up summer 2022, I would say it wasn’t pretty but it was real. And I was there for every second of it. And because of an organ donor, I have many more summers, and falls and winters and springs, to make memories in.
