A New Yardstick for Time

How do you measure time? Do you move from holiday to holiday? Do you mark time by your birthday and how old you are? Do you have a yardstick set around the weekend? Subconsciously we all measure time in some way and have a yardstick to measure it against. “Just a couple of days to go until Saturday!”.

We measure the passage of time by how long Evie has been gone. For us, time stopped at noon on the 11th January 2018. The clock reset, and time started again at that point; now everything else is compared to that point in time, and strangely it only seems to move in one direction - away from Evie’s death. Now I know that you can’t go back in time, but for me it is as if ‘before’ never existed as time in the conventional sense, but has been compressed into one moment. Our lives are measured by how much time has passed since her death.

On Monday 11th January it was 3 years since her death. As we look through photographs each Saturday morning, trying to find one for Photo Saturday on Facebook, it is a somewhat surreal experience. Time has frozen, stopped in its tracks with all of those photos set at one moment; 11 January 2018. We move further away from that moment with every day and and our concept of time moves with it. Our perception of time has changed to become one dimensional. Her death feels ‘close’, as if it was just yesterday. How can 3 years have gone by? Looking forward, there will come a point when she will have been dead for longer than she was alive. That is a moment that will be crippling. It is inevitable of course because we can’t hit the ‘pause’ button.

So, taking these thoughts to the next step, why is it relevant? Why does it matter? In some ways it doesn’t matter because we can’t do anything about it, but in others it affects your outlook on life, and how you feel about what is happening around you. It is another indicator of why life for a bereaved parent, or in fact anyone that is grieving deeply, is so different. Is it a fixation? Yes, absolutely. But importantly, it means that we are backwards-looking not forwards. Because we measure time by how long our child has been gone, planning and looking forward in a constructive way is incredibly difficult. Our yardstick is constantly changing. It takes an enormous amount of willpower to make major decisions about our future, where we might like to be career-wise or in life generally. It feels alien, disloyal to our child to be planning ahead. I want to reach back and pull her back towards me.

Before Evie died, when I was a mere youngster of 38, leaving the RAF, I set a goal - to be the CEO of a charity by the time I was 50. A yardstick of 12 years. Now in terms of personal goals I can’t figure out what I want to do next week let alone 12 years hence. I still need markers in the sand, to have something to aim at, but they are minor; a holiday, a meal. The next blog.

So my yardstick of time isn’t a yardstick at all as it grows each and every day - looking back to the day that our amazing girl died. Is it healthy? Probably not. Can I break out of it? Probably not. Can I live with it? Hmmmm ….. I don’t know. Answers on a postcard please. All I know is that I don’t want it.