Seventeen days after I became a widow, I stood by the pantry of a house I did not yet know, clutching one small dog and a ring of unfamiliar keys. Oliver trembled against my chest while I was doing my best not to. The world outside had shut its doors.
In April 2020 the world was terrorized by something we couldn’t even see. Covid19. The front porches of my new neighbors were empty. Church buildings were shuttered tight. Even the grocery store felt like a foreign country with arrows showing shoppers which way they needed to roll their carts. I knew only two people in town, and by the end of that summer, one of them would be gone.
Grief is accompanied by a peculiar fog following you everywhere. It sits across the table. It lies down beside you at night. And yet, somehow, in the middle of that intense fog, I managed to unlock the front door of Winterpast and step inside.
I didn’t feel brave, but rather intensely terrified. But, sometimes, bravery is simply showing up with a little dog and a ring of keys to enter a new chapter in life. Winterpast never wavered.
Winterpast sits on half an acre of intensely planted land, developed over twenty-two years by careful, loving hands. The soil, if you can coax desert ground into being called soil, had been amended and turned and planted and tended by gardeners who believed in beauty. Apricot trees stretch toward the Nevada sky. Crab apples prepare their spring confetti. Roses stand like sentinels along pathways. Even in my grief, I could see that this place had thrived with the devotion of Master Gardeners. We were simply the latest crew to arrive.
In those early weeks, I moved slowly. Empty one box. Fill one drawer. One day at a time. I began attending church in faith, even though I’d lost my way. I studied the Bible because I needed something solid beneath my feet. I started to write because words were the only way I could untangle the ache inside my chest. And so slowly I almost missed it, I began to heal. Winterpast helped.
In those first lonely months, I would walk the property with Oliver at my heels. We studied the empty beds. We counted new buds while listening to the wind. There’s something about tending living things that steadies a broken heart. You water. You prune. You wait. You trust that what looks dormant is not dead. Faith works the same way.
She’s more than a house. Solid and beautiful, she’s a quiet companion who doesn’t rush things. She doesn’t demand, but shelters. On windy high-desert afternoons when gusts rattle everything loose, she stands firm. When snow presses softly against the windows, she wraps us in warmth. When sunshine reflects gold across the branches of the Russian Olive, she opens her arms to light. She became my friend when I had none.
I didn’t know then what God was rebuilding inside me. I only knew how to take the next small step. Show up at church. Open the Bible. Write one paragraph. Plant one bulb. Wave at one neighbor. Simply begin again. Winterpast held me as I healed as the fog lifted.
Love returned in a form I didn’t expect. HHH walked through the doors that once felt so heavy to open. Laughter found its way back into the kitchen. The dogs multiplied and claimed their schedules and cheese rations. The pantry where I once stood trembling now holds groceries, jokes, and the hum of an ordinary Monday. Winterpast made room for all of it.
She is a protector and witness. She saw the tears. She hears our prayers. She has absorbed the whispered conversations at midnight and the grateful ones at dawn. Solid and steady, she makes sure HHH and I have a warm and snuggly place to call home. But more than that, she reminds me that beginnings can grow out of endings. Winterpast flourished long before we came and will flourish long after we’re gone. We’re simply caretakers in her long story. What a blessing it is to care for something that, in the past, cared for me.
Today, the desert is ready for spring, as the apricot tree stands quiet. Dawn’s early light glows warm against the Russian Olive. HHH is enjoying his coffee, the dogs are fed, and the keys hang easily on their hook.
The winter has passed. The rains are over and gone. The seedlings are sprouting on the table, and I am truly grateful to live in a place we call Winterpast.
Have a great day.