Who knows where the time goes?
It was the end of the day at work today when a coworker came over to ask me to make a birthday banner for the secretary’s birthday tomorrow. Ordinarily I’m not the birthday-banner-maker, but I am for the secretary, because it just doesn’t really seem right for her to have to make her own banner, pick out her own card, or pick up the birthday treats, so several of us work together to make it happen.
I couldn’t, and still can’t, get over the feeling that I just made her birthday banner. It really feels like I did so recently. And this disconnect points to an ongoing lack of comprehension of time that has been with me ever since A passed. While he’s been gone far too long, it still feels like just yesterday. It really does. And from that perspective, the secretary’s birthday couldn’t have been that long ago, because it happened the month before he died.
The time in between stretches and doubles and contracts again, like saltwater taffy. But my being surprised today indicates that no matter how much I’ve adjusted in the last 10+ months, part of me is still stuck there, particularly when it comes to recognizing the passing of time.
I don’t know if it’s a mental block, an unwillingness to recognize the passing time, or an actual inability to do so. I’ve lived every day of it; I know it has passed. I’ve lived through various anniversaries and felt the ache of each one. I’ve felt better, bit by bit, and know I’ve come a long way from those days where I looked in the mirror and didn’t recognize myself. And yet it’s impossible to me that the secretary’s having another birthday so soon.
And it seems impossible that I am approaching the one-year anniversary of his passing. It’s a few weeks away yet, but as spring has changed into summer, and school has let out, and 4th of July hurtles toward me, I cannot avoid being aware of it. What I feel is not really dread at this point, but befuddlement that it could be here so soon, that I have lived almost a year without him, and yet I don’t know that I’ve lived 6 hours together without him crossing my mind. Nor do I want to, really.
The older I get, the faster time passes. I am told by those older than I that this is true for pretty much everyone, but never has it been so evident to me as it has in this past year. At first, I mentally dug in, fighting the passage of time as my days took me further away from my life with him. Somewhere along the line, my perspective changed to the comforting thought that each passing day brought me one day closer TO him, rather than from him, and I admit, there are some moments I want to put a spur in Time’s side. Not that I want to hasten my end; I’m just anxious to be with him again in a place or space where we’re on the same level. It seems only natural to me to feel that way.