TIME AND THE PASSING OF A FRIEND

Time and the passing of a friend.
There's a hint of Spring this February time in Chattanooga. An elm shows buds, daffodils bloom, the rosemary is green, and dormant grass that leaves a tan-orange hue to the front lawn displays greening blades.
Northeast in New England and New York, winter storm Nemo's ferocious snow and ice shut down highways, air traffic and power. Southwest of here, another band of weather will shed rain and perhaps tornadoes again to the Southeast. Extremes more prevalent, attributed to climate change, an arctic melting that brings a slight enough rise in the ocean levels to change the relationship of the planet to its atmosphere.
Rotating, orbiting, speeding around a small star, we ride a life on an orb probably 4.5 billion years old in the way we measure time. In this hint of Spring, I walked to a rose of sharon now taller than me to see whether it had budded yet, a gift from a friend, Ralph Anderson, who died of the cancer I know. It will bud, a life beyond his as trees surrounding here live beyond other human lives, of other friends who have passed on, even all of us who will share this day today.
Weathering the time. As the oceans rise.