Time means nothing and it means everything since my husband died. My heart beats its’ rhythm. It plods and it races and jumps and bumps and shatters and breaks and leaps and is subtle and loud. All at the same time sometimes.
In one month it will be one year since he died.
I turned 56 two months after he died. When people ask me I always say I’m 55, not because I have an issue with my age but because time became meaningless after his death. In our years together we celebrated three days; our birthdays and our anniversary. Those two separate days that brought us into this world so that we could have that one day each year to celebrate our lives together. We were each other’s gift and we celebrated that passionately.
The night of the day that I took him to the ER and he was admitted to the hospital with a huge tumor in his left lung and the bottom 3rd of his right lung collapsed and non-functioning from the weight of another tumor, the admitting nurse told me, when I begged him for some idea of what we were facing, that he estimated, based on his experience, that Chuck had three weeks to live.
He was right. Almost to the day.
Time is so subjective, isn’t it?
It has plodded by in an excruciating way since last April 21 and yet, it will soon be a year and how is that possible? In the 24 years we were together we have never been apart for such a long period of time and it is inconceivable to me that I have to live the rest of my life without him. A concept which I can’t bear to face.
For as much as I lived in the moments with him, I’m living now in the moments without him. It is the here and now, with absolutely no idea or expectation of what tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow might bring me, good or bad. Which is freeing. I have no attachment to what might be and no attachment, honestly, to this present moment. It just is and I’m okay with that.
Sometimes we just hang onto time by the bloodied tips of our fingers. Sometimes we let go and fall and fear can take over. But sometimes there can be freedom in falling and floating and feeling nothing and everything all at once and knowing we aren’t in charge and time is going to happen and things are going to happen in that time and really, none of it is our business in so many ways.
All I know is that he loved me deeply and I loved him and that’s bigger than time past or present will ever be.
Time gifted me with 24 years of love. Love was my past and love is carrying me through my present and revealing itself more each day and love will take me into my future and is the only thing that is real to me.
Time isn’t important in the scheme of life. Only love is. I had it with Chuck and I’m breathing it in and holding it close and opening up to more and trusting in its’ continued being in my life.
And sending it out into the Universe~