It’s been 3 Fridays since the 1 year anniversary of mom’s death. I never thought about time in this way.
I thought in compartmental time.
Work Time - What needs to get done
Food Time - When to eat
Practice Time - When I should tend to my spiritual needs
Down Time - When I can relax
Play Time - When I can have fun
Family time, laundry time, friend time, health and wellness time, community time…
Never enough time to do all that is wanted even though everything wanted is done with time.
Time fitted into neat little colored boxes on the weekly grid to be checked, crossed out or rescheduled daily.
They aren’t my boxes nor what I prefer to live by. Sometimes I do nonsensical things by uncontrollably controlled habit.
“No such thing as spare time, no such thing as free time, no such thing as downtime. All you got is lifetime. Go.”
Henry Rollins
Now time is kept differently. Death has a way of pointing out the ridiculous.
Makes all this boxed scheduled time a dry sarcastic comedy rather than a tear jerker drama. It’s funny to see neatly colored boxes stacked in my head.
A dramedy of epic proportions and a miniscule moment in time.
When did time forget its sacredness?
joyrides around the sun?
cycles of a waxing and waning moon?
precious rising and setting sun?
Pause, Hit Play, Deeply Listen
Many reached out offering kind words and supportive love at the appropriate time in the grief schedule.
Please do not take my truthfulness as ungratefulness. My heart aches with gratitude to all that offered their precious love to me.
That’s when it’s expected, when reminders and preparations are made for the grief. A reason to be extra moody. A reminder for loved ones to reach out. A patience for the various shades of grief.
Grief must fit in the allotted acceptable time frame. After that, grieving should be left in the past, moodiness is no longer appropriate. “Grief has its own time,” sweetly spoken while “One must move on” is whispered under stenched breath.
Grief’s low hum is always there whether moved on or clung to tightly or moving in its own time. Always there whether heard or unheard. It rises up to be known and then returns to the low hum.
The rising is expected for those special dates. The dates I prepare for, give myself more space and understanding. I expect the possible overwhelm rising and patiently, anxiously wait for the dreaded date.
Would grief rise without this expectation?
Then there’s the grief rising from a random butterfly or child running or song or random memory. All those tender moment reminders. A rising from the unexpected expected grief.
The walls collapse in the quiet silence of being and the low hum sings.
Rarely another is there to witness this impromptu rising.
There’s also the rising from unresolved issues, unfinished projects, words left unsaid, guilt, questioning of choices. All those heavy sad or anger filled moments held tightly deep within, pushed away to the hidden far creviced edges. A rising from the denied unexpected expected grief.
The fire consumes in the quiet silence of being and the low hum roars.
If this rising is witnessed, it is met with loving avoidance and justified appeasements as one “should not” feel this fire roar. The messiest grief is best left unseen by the faint hearted.
And, there’s the rising of mortality, more future deaths, death itself, questions of “Why am I here?”
All the questions, confusion, unknown moments that rise all at once that invokes cursing God and death with violent air punches and primal screams. A rising rarely contemplated, accepted until it is.
The trouble is, you think you have time.
Jack Kornfield
The eyes open in the quiet silence of being and the low hum shakes awake something within.
It is the one we need witnessed, need to witness ourselves but fear what will be seen. The lonely grief witnessed alone even when not alone. A reminder that life isn’t stacked in neat little boxes to be checked, crossed out or rescheduled daily.
But, I guess this is how it goes when death reminds you of the sacredness of time.
