Some Endings Wear Florals
Spring is supposedly the season of rebirth and new beginnings — when rain washes away the grime of winter and flowers sprout in its place. Yet the older I get, the more Spring feels like a season of endings: family member graduations, goodbyes to college friends until next fall, packing up shoebox-sized dorm rooms never to return. As the days grow longer, I start to smell not just flowers but farewells. The goodbyes I said last year and the ones I’ll have to say again soon.
There’s a certain nostalgia that seeps into the present with the humidity — a muscle memory for old goodbyes. When rain hits warm pavement instead of ice for the first time since last summer, I am suddenly eighteen again, hugging my high school best friends in our graduation caps and gowns, or nineteen, signing the doorframe of my first dorm room, tears in my roommate’s eyes and mine.
We’re supposed to be celebrating: putting away winter coats, passing our distribution requirements, finally swearing off Econ 101. But there’s a sadness that lingers. A quiet mourning for something that hasn’t even left yet.
Maybe it’s a student thing. Each school year ends, and we brace ourselves for the next one, which is always — inevitably — different. So we start grieving before the curtain has even dropped. Or worse, we feel nothing at all. I’ve spent more than one May convincing myself I should be crying, only to find the real tears come months later — when I realize I let an ending pass me by without really feeling it.
But if Spring teaches us anything, it’s this: two feelings can exist at once. Joy and sadness can hold hands. You can be heartbroken to leave one chapter behind and still be excited for the next. We like our emotions clean and categorized, but life rarely plays along. The real work — the grown-up work — is making space to feel both at the same time.
So no, Spring isn’t just a beginning. It’s an ending too — sometimes a brand-new one, sometimes the ghost of an old one. And maybe, just maybe, that’s the most real kind of renewal there is.
