John’s hospital stay threw me out of sync. Not just in terms of the stress that came out of that situation with the additional health implication for him because of Daddy’s illness, but I’ve lost another week of time in my brain…
I still feel like I lost a year.
Over the weekend our church community celebrated the marriage of two members, and friends there celebrated their 18th wedding anniversary, so the discussions naturally drifted to how long various couple have been together/married. So I joined in talking about how long I’d known Ian and how long we would have been married.
And I keep missing a year – the 2012/13 Australian financial year is pretty much gone. Even writing this post I’ve had to sit and really think about dates and time. I hate that it’s not off the top of my head, that I need to go back and mentally calculate – “it’s 2014, we married in 2011, that makes three years since we got married”.
Which in my rational head is crazy.
You see, I know how old John is off the top of my head…
We married 4 months after he was born!! The only math I should need is subtracting “one” for how long Ian’s been gone since he died so soon after our first anniversary.
But I struggle with it. When remembering/thinking/talking about time in respect to my relationship with Ian, a year is gone; like he’s been gone one year less than he actually has. Much of the rest of my life in that first year is fuzzy, too. If I want to recall something from that first year of widowhood, I feel like I’m scratching and clawing over the edge of a black hole to grab on to those memories and draw them out. Just memories with strong emotions are easy to access – very happy ones like John’s 2nd birthday party, or watching Ian’s mum play with John at Christmas Lunch 2012.
I don’t feel sad about it, but I am annoyed and frustrated by it.
And now I’ve lost another week and I’m crazily trying to catch up to keep to some study deadlines which I’m still sure I have an extra week to go on, but my calendar tells me no, I have some 12 hours only!!