Winter Blows - Big Time

It's hard to be happy when it's so friggin' cold.  An Arctic front has been visiting my part of the world for more than two weeks now, and it's taking the piss right out of me.  I've written about my aversion to cold a few times in winters past, so my faithful followers already know how I feel about being a denizen of the true north strong and freezing during the winter.  I  suppose I should have my citizenship revoked.
Last week, on my first day back after Christmas at the bookstore where I work, I inexplicably began to weep copious tears for my late, lamented kitty, Lulu.  I hid behind bookshelves when I couldn't keep my feelings contained, all the while wondering what had suddenly triggered such depth of grief three months after her passing.  By the end of my shift I finally figured it out.
The store is heated of course, but it's so large that even proper heating can't keep the frigid cold completely out. So even inside I'm always cold and scared, huddling and shivering like a homeless, frightened 
waif straight out of a Hans Christian Andersen story. 
Feeling fear when it's cold isn't uncommon - it's the body/mind thing.  Shivering is a physical reaction to both cold and fear, so sometimes the brain will fire up fear responses when the body sends a message that it's cold.  But that doesn't explain why I felt grief as well.  The answer came to me when I passed the "Religion" section of the store.  I noticed C.S. Lewis's book A Grief  Observed on one of the shelves.  It's a personal account of his deep mourning after the death of his wife, Joy.  Upon seeing the book I remembered what is probably its most famous quote - No one told me that grief felt so like fear.  Suddenly I understood how the physical and emotional feelings of cold and fear are so easily entangled with grief. 
The body and mind talk back and forth to each other all the time.  Even as I write this I still feel cold just looking out the window, and afraid for all the small birds and animals that must endure this wretched weather.  Many of them die during such a winter as the one we're having now, which saddens me even more.  And so goes the mind/body loop.
Dante had it right when he described the deepest level of hell as a land of ice and snow, completely devoid of life.  The Devil is trapped in ice up to his waist, while his huge bat wings continually flap up a frigid, deadly wind.  It's the worst kind of hell because there's no hope for life of any kind.  There's neither growth nor decay, nor the combustion of the better known fiery levels of Dante's hell.  The true heart of hell holds no possibility for change.  It's a hopeless, frightening land of icy, eternal stasis.  Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. 

Dante's description of hell very poetically explains why I often feel sadness and fear during the coldest months of the year.  Fortunately, unlike Dante's ice-bound hell, the cycle of the seasons keeps on rolling, and light and warmth eventually return.  I'm also truly grateful to have shelter that includes a working furnace.
As I write this the late afternoon sun shines so brightly it makes the bitterly cold scene outside my window positively sparkle, adding to the beauty of the intricate, lacy patterns the frost makes as it creeps up the window pane.  The present onslaught of harsh weather will surely pass, and I'll get through it, difficult though it may be.  And that makes me happy.
g.p.