Bittersweet Sunsets

*Cliche alert* They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here’s a couple of thousand words.

The sun is very much setting on this school year. With only ~16 days left, it is certainly a bittersweet ending. But the thing about endings is that it always means a new beginning. But there aren’t always the words that can convey the meaning, the depth of emotion, that you and I feel. Even the word bittersweet seems inadequate. Yes, it seems to be a rather fitting word for the situation, but it fails. Because my bittersweet means so much more than time moving on, and mixed emotions of happiness and sadness. My bittersweet means Jill crying on the bus as it pulled out of the elementary school on the last day of 5th grade. It’s the sign welcoming me to South Dakota as I drive away from my home, it’s the chalky hugs that I got from my teammates on my last day, it’s the final hug of summer’s bliss before the leaves fall and school starts. It’s a word has so much more than any other word. Happiness brings back fond memories that make the sun shine in you from inside out, warming your body to the fingertips with an inexplicable glee. Sadness evokes tears and stabs your heart so deeply that it may seem irreparable. But bittersweet does so much more. It combines the power of sadness and happiness and wrings your heart and soul. It squeezes out every last drop until it hurts. But the pain is dulled. The pain has been rimmed with a sense of memorial fondness. It pulls your memories closer to your heart, weaving them into the veins and tendons of your very being. It embraces the good and bad, retaining the positives and negatives. It doesn’t sugarcoat what was there. It’s mourns what was, but with the celebration of what is. But you have to remember that it’s bittersweet. It’s going to be a whole lot of bitter before it gets bittersweet. And so as the year comes to a close, and the sun sets on what was, we only have to remember to wait for it to rise on what will be.