Since we are not having winter this year, I thought it might be nice to eulogize winter for a moment. It isn’t cold out, there is no snow, the days are getting longer, baseball players don’t need an extra long-sleeve t-shirt to stay warm, the robins are headed north, and flowers are blooming everywhere. There is no chill in the air. Yet, it is still winter, the cruelest time of year when hearts and souls are at their lowest point, when just facing another day is a challenge, when your reserves are all that you have left, when making ends meet is not a possibility. It is that time of the year when Mother Nature does a little house-cleaning, calling the oldest, the sickest, home one last time. Winter and death have always gone hand in hand, and the white snow signifies the eternal sleep of the ages as it covers everything and everybody, the just and the unjust alike. Snow erases color and shape and memory, sweeping away life and silencing the sounds of living. Winter has been just another part of the eternal cycle of the seasons, symbolic of the end, the end of everything. Winter is here to remind us all of our own mortality, of the finite nature of life, of the struggle we all make to get to the next day. Many animals will sleep during the cold dark quiet days of winter, their body temperatures dropping into a state of hypothermia that allows them to comfortably hibernate until Spring and food return. The trees lose their leaves, the grass turns gray and the whole world puts on a tunic of browns, grays and whites in order to wait out the winter. Winter is too much for some, and spring is too far away. The sun is not warm, dimly sitting on the horizon before it too disappears. The icy temperatures of winter are completely contrary to the warm hearts that beat within us. Ice, snow, darkness creep in on all sides like a pack of wolves waiting for their prey to fall one last time. The dead of winter are silent; their pain is gone and suffering is over, and then they are gone, leaving only a memory behind. But the days pass, the sun gets warmer, the days longer, and the gray, rainy days of March turn into the sunny, breezy and warm days of April. The birds are back, the daffodils are blooming, the tulips are red, and the heavy jackets go back in the closet. Winter is over, again, for awhile, and she goes back to her cave and lets the living have their world back–at least for a little while.