Winter casts a pall
The primary reason we moved to the Lowcountry when we retired from decades of classroom teaching was my desire to flee the winter in CT. The cold has never affected me and I would regularly shovel snow in shorts. In fact, I played football in shorts in the winter growing up in the Bronx. My wife joked what was it that I was escaping from since I dressed like a four-year-old boy?
As the years went by it became clear that it was more the lack of daylight and consistent sunshine. Age also brought with it the increasing dislike of driving on snow and ice, but it was the encroaching darkness each day that really hit me hard.
Couple that feeling with the post-holiday doldrums that January and February bring, and it felt as if leaving that behind would magically change the pall that winter continued to cast on me.
What I have only now come to realise is that for me, winter has become bleak due to more than the weather. My dad passed far too early in late fall of 1993, his birthday was Dec 5 and while the holidays cover a lot of that sadness, it always resurfaces when all the decorations are put away and all the parties and gatherings have concluded.
The second man who shaped much of what I am today, my uncle Dominic P. Starace, passed in January 2019. That day remains frozen in my memory and each year since, whether there is sunshine or daylight, it is still a dark day. Stir into that melancholy cocktail the last ingredient: Abbey THE dog, our 2012 rescue from a kill shelter in Georgia, ran her last race and crossed the rainbow bridge in January 2025.She was my buddy. She slept in the car during the 13-plus-hour drive when we moved, delighted in wandering around her little fenced-in yard, laying in the sunshine and letting the wind blow over her — something she couldn’t do in Connecticut because the property lacked fencing — and she always greeted us as if she hadn’t seen us in months, even if we were only gone for an hour.
There are constant reminders of all three throughout the year. Certain songs, pictures, videos that pop up, but it seems to hit the hardest during that part of the year between holiday season and baseball season. It’s not the cover of the book that brings out those feelings, but what’s between the pages, the closing of one chapter after another.
The good news is that all of them still live on simply because I think of them all the time. Instead of worrying about slipping on the ice or raking the roof so it doesn’t create leaks in a house built in 1905, I can – even in a laughably “chilly” day – go and sit in the yard that Abbey loved, pour a dram of a good single malt, and listen to some music. Instead of crying because of them being gone, I smile and laugh because they were here.
I guess we can let Bruce play us out.
“Well, now the years have gone and I’ve grown
From that seed you’ve sown
But I didn’t think there’d be so many steps
I’d have to learn on my own.”
Kevin Fitzpatrick is a retired teacher who, along with his wife Sue (also a retired teacher) is enjoying exploring life in the lowcountry and all it has to offer.
