It’s about time.

Time is on my mind. Both literally and figuratively. Physically, the time change coming back from Spain has put a hurting on me. That combined with the excitement and activity surrounding my son’s engagement gave me a serious case of jet lag that lasted well into my first few days back at work. It was three days before I could even think about doing laundry or turning on the TV. It’s nearly two weeks now of trying to get another post completed.

Then, there’s this.

How on earth I can fly to another continent and manage to take care of myself but can’t go to the grocery store is fodder for another post. Ugh. Ridiculous. At any rate, I would like to officially add travel to the Griefwork Toolbox. I can certainly attest to its healing affect. One aspect that was made abundantly clear to me during the course of my travel is that it’s no credit to me, I get no sense of accomplishment or confidence, if I’m able to manage when things are going smoothly. I only learn about myself and my capabilities when things are going wrong. That’s not to say that I need or want things to go wrong. I am just saying that I am grateful in both sets of circumstances as I have opportunities to learn and grow. I spent the last 30 years in partnership with my husband. I do currently have a need to fully understand my ability to manage life on my own.

I’ve tried to adjust to the time change by sticking to my routines, exercise and regular bedtime, and not napping even though I really wanted to, but it was still nearly five days before I felt normal, like myself again. I felt like a person out of time, removed from a previous state of existence. The first time I experienced this was after the death of my mother. Even at that young age, barely 12 years old, I was aware that time, or the way I experienced it, was different. My very existence as I had known it was over, and a new existence had begun. A quick search of my posts yielded 107 occurrences of the word time. I have written previously about how my calendar is different, but it’s more than that. I experience time differently now.

This painting by Salvador Dali is titled The Persistence of Memory. I was fortunate to see it in person at the Museum of Modern Art during my unexpected stay in New York.

The title is so curious. In fact, it’s often called by other names like “Melting Clocks” or “Melting Watches”. But clearly, Dali, recognized, or pondered like myself, the connection between time and memory and perception. I am intrigued about the possibility that time and memory are actually one and the same and the potential of that equality.

I have a time machine. My memory is good. Too good sometimes. Memory is routed through the hippocampus and stored in the temporal region of the brain which is responsible for how we process memories and integrate them with sensory information, the way we perceive the world. I remember everything with nearly perfect recall. Many family members confirm that my earliest memories are from not too far past my second birthday. They are images only, but they are accurate. Lately, these memories of mine have been tricking me into thinking I am somewhere else or talking to someone else about something else, and I make mistakes in my references. I never noticed myself making these kinds of mistakes before Paul died or at least not to this level. A puzzled look from a friend or family member usually brings the mistake to my attention, and I say, “Oh, I meant, ______. I was in my time machine.” In other words, I associated the current circumstances for another place and time.

In his essay, “To Grieve is to Carry Another Time”, Matthew Salesses refers to this same phenomenon. He read and researched the mechanism and function of time hoping for a way to go back to before his wife died but with, obviously, no success. Salesses wrote, “So why, my grief asks, can’t we change times simply by changing our perceptions?” According to Salesses’ research, physicist Carlo Rovelli offers the mind itself as a time machine so that we may travel via memory. I, too, have attempted time travel by seeking the answer to this same question. The fact that we, the grievers, would even think such a thing is possible is yet another indication of the disorder, confusion, and madness with which grief wrecks the rational mind. Since Paul died, I have consciously worked on cultivating my ability to go back in time through memories to visit with him. Instead of my memories playing like a movie on a screen, I go inside my memories and walk around, talking, feeling. Salesses asserts, “This is a disappointing compromise. In mourning, memory is only another cause for mourning. It does not change time, only reminds one that time has passed.” I’m not sure about that.

We all know that humans experience time in a linear way, past, present, and future, like following a string. But I am thinking of that string wound around a spool. From the inside of the spool, we could view all of that wound up time and select a strand of time to experience. And, what if, just what if the string of time is not being wound up? What if it’s the other way around? What if the string of time is being wound out? Think about that. The past is something that has already happened right? If the future is something that is already set, already on the spool, whether it’s known or unknown, then it is equal to the past. This is actually comforting to me. The future may be a puzzle that I have struggled to piece together, but it is concrete.

I was talking to a friend recently about how long Paul and I were together, and I blurted out 31 years. Thirty-one years. That’s the number of years IF Paul was still alive, and I just blurted it out like our clock was still ticking, but it’s not. I was in my time machine. Our time is over. They say that time heals all wounds. In my experience, time heals nothing, but God does. Healing happens through faith and hard work.

He heals the brokenhearted and bandages their wounds. – Psalm 147:2

Indeed, He does. Malia