Mayday

May is a fact and in general it is one of my favorite times of the year. I love seeing nature awakening after the long, wet and dark Winter. Things like crispy green trees, white and pink blossoms, perfect temperatures and the longer days can create smiles on my face. Spring can make me jump!

There is one day in particular that I really feel that the season to feel back alive has arrived and that is the 1st of May! It is a nice extra that it's a free day but that is not the real reason why I truely cherish that day. It's also day that my father died. So every year I get to repeat the movie inside my head of those last three weeks before that date.

My dad had actually self-diagnosed him with terminal cancer and had not told a soul till the very last stage. The moment he told my mother and me we were standing in the kitchen feeling like the ground was swept away from under our feet. 'What are we supposed to do without you?', I asked him. He was standing there, looking rather defeated, stared me right in the eyes and said very firmly:'You will manage without me! You will have to!' Not exactly the words that you want to hear when you are in the spingtime of your life and still are picturing yourself with your dad walking down the aisle! He died, at home on the evening of the first of May, granting us a free day to remember him!

Now, 7 years later when I drove home on that day wondering what life would have been like if he would be still there! While cruising down the highways and see nature in bloom and I recalled his 'joie de vivre'! Arriving home is then walking back on the path heading for a door where behind a garden was created by my him to make us all falling in love with life! Behind that door is the spot where I spended my childhood, played hide and seek, kissed my first boyfriend, celebrated numerous gardenparties, searched for eastereggs, learned to bike, walked barefeet through the grass, ran after our cat and many other things that now are the past.

During those twenty steps towards that door where behind all those memories are created that now are part of my story of life I sense so many things. It is hard to describe but you can bet when I open that door and see my mother sitting there, in that same garden that she treats with unconditional love and patience (just like she did with my father) on her feet a grandchild playing and all the rest of the family in good spirits and champagne glasses in their hands, I know that my dad would have done the exactly the same thing on a sunny first May Day: live!