The Passage of Time

I have only two weeks left in my sabbatical. Once upon a time, having two weeks off would have felt like an eternity. But given that the last 5 1/2 months, actually this whole year so far, has gone by like lightening, I know this time will be gone before I know it.

I've experienced just enough of life to know that time never keeps to a constant pace. Emma's first 3 months seemed like an eternity as I struggled with no sleep and all the anxieties of a first-time parent. Soren's first 3 months were a blur; I was too busy caring for a newborn and toddler simultaneously to care about sleep or to be anxious. And having lived through the newborn stage once, I knew I would make it through it again, thereby ensuring its quick passage.

But this year has been a whole other experience. In some ways, life seems stuck on pause at different moments: getting the call that Midi was gone and Nathan was dying, walking into the wake with Midi's mother, the memorial service... times played over and over again in my head that I never seem to get beyond. But the rest of the year has been on fast forward; perhaps because I'm still stuck on New Year's Day, I can't believe it's September now.

In some ways, that could seem like a mercy, to get through the first throes of grief as quickly as possible. But as I get ready to resume "normal" life in a few weeks, going back to work, getting the kids in a routine with school, beginning to figure out things for our family that have been on pause thus far this year, it's beginning to dawn on me that perhaps the worst part of the grieving process is yet to come, the part where I have to get used to life without Midi and Nathan, to manufacture an existence that isn't merely a reaction to their absence. It's so much easier to either try to ignore your grief altogether or to embrace it fully than to walk with it hand in hand while trying to go about with all the other business of life. Especially the happy or peaceful times. Reconciling joy and satisfaction with life with incalcuable loss... I think by the time I get to the place where that comes more naturally to me, I will have gotten the pause and fast forward buttons unstuck in my soul.