Signs of spring encourage me amid the difficulties of life with ALS

Signs of spring appear every day outside my kitchen window here in northern Michigan, even as my own life feels heavy with my care for my husband, Todd, who has ALS.

After a long winter, our 2 feet of snow, which was in the field behind our house a few short weeks ago, is melting quickly. The field’s south side, along a tree line, still has some white, but water has pooled in the middle of the field. It’s held there by the ice on our pond before it can drain and exit into a ditch, which will eventually take much of it down the hill to Lake Superior.

One morning, two coyotes scampered through the field and slipped into the tree line. Minutes later they emerged again, crossed the road, and disappeared into brush.

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A short time after that, two sandhill cranes, tall and elegant, strutted across the field, searching for signs of life themselves. Northern flicker woodpeckers rhythmically tapped away at a decaying mountain ash, and Canadian geese honked overhead, migrating north in V-formation. And then a robin — a certain sign of spring — perched on a branch.

And through a camera on a bird feeder, Todd watched American goldfinches, yellow finches, chickadees, and blue jays from his office computer.

A chickadee in flight joins a female American goldfinch at Todd’s camera-equipped bird feeder. (Courtesy of Kristin Neva)

I’m amazed by the speed of the shifting landscape. Just last week, I skied one last time for the season before a big rain washed the tracks from the cross-country trails. Now the earth is soft, and signs of new life abound.

Amid spring, perpetual winter

But inside my home, life doesn’t mirror that same energy of renewal. The reality of Todd’s ALS, with its relentless progression, means a perpetual winter for us. There’s no treatment. No cure. Just a slow decline. Day by day, I care for him, and while I do find meaning in that care, it doesn’t bring the same sense of forward motion that I see outside my window.

And yet, even though that energy isn’t happening in my personal life, I still see its effect on the world. I see it in our children as I’ve watched them grow from kids into teenagers and now into young adults. I see it in the lives of our friends’ children. I see it in the rhythm of the seasons, in the return of the birds, and the simple fact that the world keeps going.

There’s something powerful about witnessing growth, even if I’m not the one experiencing it firsthand. I feel vicarious joy in the excitement, the movement, the renewal.

Spring is here. Life is stirring. While Todd and I are on a hard path, I’m grateful for the beauty that surrounds us, and I try to focus on the message from Ecclesiastes in the lyrics of “Turn! Turn! Turn!” by the Byrds:

“To everything — turn, turn, turn

There is a season — turn, turn, turn

And a time to every purpose under heaven

A time to be born, a time to die

A time to plant, a time to reap

A time to kill, a time to heal

A time to laugh, a time to weep.”

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