Sometimes It Snows In April: A Reflection on Love and Loss

April holds a complicated place in my heart. A month of renewal for many, a promise of flowers blossoming and warmer days. But for me, April has been both a season of profound loss and unexpected miracles — the kind that catch you off guard, like snow falling when the world expects sunshine.

On April 11, 2002, I lost my mother to cancer. I was just 35 years young when the woman who had given me life, who had taught me to love, who celebrated my successes and comforted me through my failures, who believed I could do and be anything — slipped away from this world. Fast-forward nearly twenty years later, I said goodbye to my father on April 29, 2023 — to the same ruthless disease.

Me with my mom, serving as maid of honor on her wedding day.

Nearly two decades. Two devastating heartbreaks.

Both in April.

Both a cruel irony.

In the days after each loss, it often felt as if the universe had played a cruel trick on me — as if the season meant to promise life had instead delivered silence. And in moments of reflection, I often turn to music for comfort and familiarity. And most frequently, it's Prince. 💜

In today's moment of reflection, Prince sang it best: “Sometimes it snows in April.”

Grief is strange like that. It doesn’t always come how or when you expect. It doesn’t follow the weather forecast or the rules of the seasons. It lingers, floats, and settles, like an unexpected snow.

And yet, even in those coldest Aprils, there are miracles.

In June 2006, after my then fiancé proposed — a man with the kind of soul you pray for but almost never find — suggested we marry in April. I still remember blinking at him through tears I didn’t even realize I’d been holding.

My wedding day...with special guests Minnie and Mickey Mouse.

"April?" The month that had taken so much? Yes, he said. "Exactly because of that."

Together, we would reclaim it. We would make it ours. A month of new beginnings, not just endings. A quiet defiance against that all-consuming type of grief. A tender memorial to my mother.

I was blessed to have my father by my side on April 14, 2007, when I married my best friend, the man of dreams, the love of my life. I didn't just gain a husband, my father also gained another son. And I spent years overwhelmingly blessed by their relationship that started with me but grew because of them.

Celebrating my 35th birthday with my dad.

And just as the weather will remind us that we are in fact not in control and sometimes there will be snow in April, my daddy peacefully departed this earth surrounded by those who loved and cherished him on April 29, 2023.

Now, as write out this reflection, two years later in April 2025, something extraordinary has happened.

After struggling for over a year to write or tap into any of my creative powers since my father's death, last week I received my first full manuscript request from a publisher — Harlequin Romance — for a novel I had dared to write and dared to dream could live beyond my laptop screen.

It felt like the universe whispering:

“Sometimes it snows in April… but sometimes, too, it blooms.”

Prince, a musical genius who understood the ache and the beauty of existence, also left this world in April. His death in 2016 devastated millions. Yet his spirit didn’t freeze with the snow — it became more vibrant, more unstoppable. His music, his art, his legacy—it pulses, it sings, it lives.

Just like love.

Just like hope.

Just like the quiet strength we sometimes don’t know we’re building when the world feels most barren. When loss seems to prevail.

Grief has taught me that sorrow and beauty are not opposites — they are twins, born from the same heart. We grieve hard because we love hard. It's possible to mourn and rejoice at once. To miss someone with every breath and still marvel at a sky unexpectedly opening to let fall soft white petals of snow in a month meant for tulips.

“All good things, they say, never last…”

And maybe that is also true.

But some things — some people, some dreams, some legacies — do last.

They shift shape. They become part of us. They show up when the calendar flips and the chill creeps in unexpectedly, and we think, I know this feeling. I survived this before. I will survive it again.

And sometimes, if we’re lucky, we get to witness that rare, breathtaking moment when sorrow gives way to grace.

When snow kisses the ground in April — and reminds us:

We are still here.

We are still capable of miracles.

We are guaranteed to feel love and loss.

We are still becoming.

And sometimes — just sometimes — these moments come back around and we are reminded that love and loss, grief and grace, can co-exist...just like snow in April.