I wrote a Facebook post after my Dad passed about time being elusive. The one thing you can’t get ahold of no matter how hard you try. I was reminded of that thought when a dear friend of mine wrote about wishing she could gift me more time with Matt.
Side note- it’s really weird to call him Matt in these blogs. I never called him that. I always called him Babe or Daddy.. or anything but Matt, really.
‘Time heals all wounds.’ It sounds great, right? It’s what people say to make you feel better. It’s what you tell yourself to feel better. In actuality, I’m not convinced time actually heals wounds- I think time lessons the memory of the depth of pain. The depth of trauma. But it doesn’t lesson the depths of love- not in this case. One example of time and lessoning of pain is child birth… I remember when I was in labor with Michael, pushing for 4+ hours saying to Matt at one point, ‘you did this’ 😂😂😂 a physical pain so unimaginable… yet I did it again.. and again. We’d all go through that pain over and over to have our children in our arms. Same goes for loss- I’ve always said the deepest loss comes from the greatest love. How fortunate am I to have had a love so deep that the pain matches in comparison. I would go through this pain again and again to experience the love and life we had together. It was honest, it was real, it was ugly, and it was messy- but it was beautiful, and as I’ve said before, it was ours. Recently, when I pinched my fingers moving rocks in the yard, I said to my aunt who was helping me, ‘it’s just pain,’ as I was wincing and trying to ‘shake off’ the sting from my hand. Thankfully, as time goes on, you forget the depths of your pain. You yearn for that 2nd, 3rd child. You continue to move the rock pile. You live with the pain of loss because there’s nothing greater than the love that was shared. From a healing standpoint, the elusiveness of time can be both helpful and not. The greatest gift as the pain and memory of trauma lesson, but the greatest burden as I feel further from him every day. Another dichotomy. Thank God the one thing that lasts forever are the memories. The memory of love. The memory of holding your child for the first time. The memory of him holding our children for the first time. The memory of our first kiss in his parents driveway under the stars leaning on the Caprese. How clear the sky was and how bright the stars twinkled. How until he died, he’d make me go outside every time there was a clear sky to look up at the beauty above. How he was a night owl, so though it was rare he came to bed with me, he made sure to tuck me in every single night. Those memories are strong and will be with me, always. The memories of joy and love and happier times will be with me, always. I am making progress. Time is helping. Our boys are making progress.. time is helping them, too. We are further into our healing than we were even a week ago. Though as time moves forward, the empty chair beside me still sits empty and my children still yearn for him to walk through the door again.
Time. Such a blessing and a burden, alike.
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