Not the time that circles numbers on a clock, but the time that encircles a heart.
I needed to walk with my sorrow in my sorrow. I needed to be alone, to be with others and to just be.
In my world of the Afterloss, time bends like light bends space. A memory takes time. I could hold a photograph for minutes and hours would pass.
The landscape of my Afterloss resides in a timelessness that is far too short. I wanted more time with the ones I love. I wanted to hold them one more time. I wanted time to stop.
The world around me kept time while in my Afterloss I was out of time. I no longer fit within the clocks that measure the days.
I would be sitting in a room full of people and it wasn’t even like I was alone; I wasn’t even there. My body kept time, but my heart beat elsewhere. I just wanted my body to leave with my heart, but time kept me in the room while the beat of timelessness took my heart deep into that other world – the world of the Afterloss.
Death took my family. Death left me here to die a different death. Time died for me. My family journeyed on into the Afterlife and my path was the path into the Afterloss. We still meet where life and loss intersect in the timelessness of love.
Time separates everything into little compartments. Timelessness intertwines everything into the great expanse.
But in order to go into the timeless depths of my Afterloss, I needed time. I needed breathing space on this planet of time. I needed long walks, deep conversations with those traveling the same path in their own Afterloss, candlelight reflections, tenderness, tears, laughter, joy, emptiness to fill my timelessness, and above all time.
The world does not give us time. We have to take it.
I had to carve out the time to feel the depths of my pain. I needed to feel, to feel safe to sorrow. I needed a nurturing space where time gave me a place to hurt.
I didn’t care what schedule the world was on because it was no longer my world. The ghost that passed by me were the ones with bodies scurrying along in their worlds of time. I wasn’t even sure if I was the ghost sitting in my cubicle or they were. After all, they had a tomorrow; and for me tomorrow was a long time ago.
My future, my dreams, my hopes changed with time and what time took. When I could hold the ones I love no longer, I didn’t know what was left to hold. So, I stopped holding time. Perhaps it was because I simply couldn’t hold on any longer to something that had no meaning for me anymore.
I am so grateful I took the time to grieve, to explore every mountain and ravine of my Afterloss. If I hadn’t gone into every part of me and embrace every part that became of me, I would not have been able to embrace every part that I was to become of me.
I am here because I was willing to go there. I have been shaped by loss into love. Had I not been willing to follow my pain into its depths, I don’t believe I would have found the essence of love.
Love is transcendent. It goes beyond the separation of time, but I needed time to find it.
