It's toad mating season again.

So here are two vignettes I wrote last year about grief.

1.

It is an unusually swampy day for early spring. I can smell the 85-degree air and the briny marsh. I float down the path as if in a dream, carried on legs that have gone unused for months. I gulp the clean air and sigh, grateful to be out again.

I have weathered a battering winter that has left me wrung out and desperate for relief. Chronic illness has waged war on my body, and I have been curling in on myself. Under the blue sky, I begin to unfurl.

I have come to my favorite place to be alone, the Patuxent Research Refuge. During the day, it is empty apart from a few people with fishing rods on the far side of the lake. I have a special spot tucked down a path on the near side that looks out at the water from a set of graying stumps.

As I reach my spot, a cacophony of croaking fills my ears. I tiptoe to the water’s edge and see hundreds of slimy, writhing bodies thrashing in the muck. Their screams are blaring and rhythmic, like fire alarms. It is toad mating season.

I marvel at the spectacle, at the fervent declaration of life.

Then, without warning, I collapse on the stump nearest me, wracked with sobs. Not moved by the beauty of the toad orgy, but wrapped in a wicked self-pity that sucks the air out of my lungs.

The world has gone on without me. I have been trapped in a cage, and opening the door has only shown me how far I am from being set free.

I have lost so much. Coming to the Research Refuge was once a regular, sacred practice for me. It was the place I could go to reset, to clear my head, to ground myself. Now, I have sacrificed two weeks of energy to get here, a ten-minute walk from the parking lot.

I try to hold on to the beauty of the moment, try to search for the voice that tells me everything is going to be alright, but there is nothing there. Just the shrieking of the toads.

2.

It is an unusually mild day for early fall. Again, I can smell the temperature of the air, a crisp 65 degrees, and the dust kicked up by my tires on the road. I am out on my own with Zoomy, my new all-terrain electric wheelchair. Mellow music drifts quietly from my earbuds, and my flannel flaps in the wind.

August was so hot that I couldn’t set foot outside the house. Even if I could have, I wouldn’t have had the energy. But I have had more good days this summer than ever before in the course of my illness, and with the new chair, I am seeing the world through new eyes.

I have no plan and follow my whims. I take the short path to the lake, stopping to pet a pair of dachshunds and testing out the trail through the woods. I get stuck a few times and have to wiggle myself free, but I make it down the hill. I go all the way around the lake for the first time in over a year, smiling and nodding to every person I pass, marveling at the act. The gravel is bumpy, and I feel thoroughly jostled as I make my way into town.

I head for the community center. In the parking lot, I see tents and food trucks bustling with sales. The Farmer’s Market. I had forgotten it was today.

As I weave through the market, memories come back to me that I had completely blocked out: mornings walking into town and buying produce, afternoons spent exploring the city on foot, evenings biking through the agricultural reserve with my music blasting.

I feel like I’m a part of some old movie, seeing the ghost of my past. I have lost so much, I think to myself. How grateful I am to have had so much.

I motor back up the hill toward my house, but take a turn a few blocks away down a quiet dirt road. At the end of the road is a field, and I flop on my back where the sun meets the shade.

Bees and butterflies flit around the edges of my vision. The sky is a crystal clear blue. I take out my earbuds and listen. No voice telling me that everything is going to be okay. Just my own, steady heartbeat and the birds and the bugs and the wind in the trees.