20. 6

Emptiness sets a record.

Written Wednesday, February 12, 2020 / Day 184 / Morning

Time is one of those things we think we understand. Turns out we really do not have a clue.

Think about it. We have this idea we can measure it. We most likely have more time telling devices around us than we realize. They tell us of the moment. We use them to plan our future moments. We use time to track our past activities. But that’s about it.

Time really does not have any other measurable component to it - other than we can see it’s progression.

Time does not “feel” like anything.

Teaching time to a child gives us a clue to this idea. As much as you try to teach them - they just do not get it. And when they do get it - time becomes a barrier to some activity they want to participate in but cannot because it is not yet “time” for that activity to take place.

Children really live in the moment. We interrupt them continually for the mechanics of life. But to them, "I’m playing here - does [whatever is interrupting me] really have to happen right now?"

They question our interruptions until that day when they join us in the time tracking club where our life’s activities are segmented into specific moments when they are allowed to occur. Other than that - time is really just a concept.

Today is the sixth month moment in my journey. Although I see the number, see the date on the calendar - none of that really sinks in at all.

Those of us in grief lose our ability to care a lot about time anyway. Except for the obligations of life that do have a time component to them - we just drift from moment to moment.

What day is it? What month?

In one sense while we are keenly aware of the excruciatingly painful life of emptiness we must live - in these moments - which are many - there really is not any time.

Our bodies may remind us that we need to eat something. The darkness outside reminds us that we have to sleep.

But time itself - as much as we measure it - really has nothing to offer.

Today is six months. So? What does that mean? So many days have passed. Okay. Right.

The calendar now says February - it used to say August.

There is no feedback from time.

No feedback because in reality our life is not subject to time.

Now our bodies are. These containers that reflect how broken our world is and as a side effect of that - reflect how the broken world keeps breaking us a bit at a time.

But inside us - inside where “you” are - there is no time. You “feel” - apart from your bodily interference - young (whatever that feels like). Your spirit is beyond time. Perhaps that is why time is only an attribute and not really anything more. A measurement of the physical while what makes us “us” is beyond anything in our reality.

In grief, I constantly ask the same questions over and over. I know the answers to many of them. But I keep asking them anyway. Maybe to hear myself talk? Who knows?

So while to the analytically minded a “milestone” has been achieved - it is quite a bitter measurement. One I’d rather not bask in.

Like the sports commentators who review the statistics and performance of the teams in the game - I look back and see this past month of the grief game as having been quite intense.

Actually beyond intense.

Yet today I have a strange neutrality to this moment. It is really significant only for those who measure things.

That is a part of my personality so that part is enjoying the analytical achievement.

But my heart - that heart that has been crushed by the weight of reality - that heart is rather quiet today. Quite still.

So I will let it rest in where I am at the moment.

As has been the case - the significance of any moment is never really known until we are past the moment.

Seems like I can know the time.

But not really see what it will mean until that moment becomes history.