[Post B Week 5]

Sometimes I wonder if the timing of a death can have different effects on the period of grieving and moving on.

If a death ocurs in the spring, I would think that healing time would be a decent period of time, but not extensively, because it is much more difficult to be sad when there are flowers blooming and the days are getting longer and the weather is getting warmer. It's natural to be happier with more exposure to light--especially sunlight

If a death occurs in the summer, I think that grieving would be the shortest. The temperatures are nice and high, and the days are so long! It's hard not to spend time outside, and the Vitamin D would naturally raise your mood.

If a death occurs in the fall, it would be a more difficult grieving time. The leaves are falling off the tress and it gets kind of windy. The temperatures are getting crispy, and the days get shorter. Almost as if the light is closing in on you.

If a death occurs in the winter, the grieving time would be the most difficult. The snow puts a blanket of silence, and there is essentially very few daylight hours. The cold, sub-zero temperatures Minnesota so kindly drops in our laps make it hard to find joy. In winter, the light does close in on you...if you let it, I guess.

That is why, in the book The Center of Winter, I think that the grieving is so much more difficult. Claire and Kate are nearly suffocated underneath the dead of winter. I'm curious to the degree of how much different the grieving behaviors would have been.