When I approached the building fourteen days ago, time shifted. Time went from chattering with my children in the car to go check on Edmond at the office, to milliseconds that felt like moving through putty. The entire parking lot of our office building was roped off in yellow tape. The perimeter held a sea of emergency vehicles with their lights ablaze. It was another world contained, separated from the surrounding neighborhood and office buildings in the circular block. Seeing the gray color washed over my friend’s face, one of the EMS workers, as he calmly approached me required no words. I fell to my knees. I could hardly breathe; the air had been pushed out of my lungs by the shock of this other world just on the other side of the yellow caution tape.

Time moves at different rates. The exact same minute passes at a different perceivable rate depending on the circumstance. Our focus or lack of presence shifts our perception of time. When we are truly present, in the moment, we feel like we can stretch time making the lovely and beautiful last longer.

Edmond and I used to stretch time. We would go slow on our errands, less goal oriented and more present to the process of what was between us or who or what was around us as we did the tasks of the day. The list of to-do’s had often become an excuse to spend time and see what happened.

When we were together, we were almost always touching. We held hands a lot. I held onto his arm as we walked. He only ever sat at the head of the table when all of our children were home. It was how we could accommodate our four young adults, two tween/teens still at home. It was usually only at these big gatherings that he and I sat across from each other at either end of our seven foot kitchen table. Most of the time, he chose the seat right next to me, so we could touch knees. We stretched time like this, making a few minutes or half hour last so we could savor some time together. Sometimes, I would just be near him while he fixed something or worked on a brief.

Now, the time moves too slowly. The grief brings me presence. But, there is no savoring the anguish of this kind of loss, and yet is rules my body at times. I pray for time to pass more quickly but that is a double-edged sword. Knowing there are more layers on the other side of the one I sit in is just daunting. Stalling out here would consume me, and there is no going back. There is only here.

There are ways to bypass this grief, at least for a time. People do it frequently, stuffing the pain into the deep pockets of their bodies, partitioning off what feels too overwhelming to acknowledge. I have done it. We all have, I am sure. Many dive into every kind of busy available, distracting themselves from the truth and the pain. I call this our “collective imagination problem”.

Our modern paradigm does not accommodate or tolerate discomfort and uncertainty long enough to allow new potentials to emerge. We dip our toe in the waters of the liminal state of destruction, and externalize the cause of the pain. In this way, we bypass the liminal state of change never truly arriving in a new place. We blame and shame to avoid the discombobulating and disorienting liminal territory. We project what we reject within ourselves, disowning what we wish were not part of our human experience. We often do not have sufficient capacity or support to tolerate discomfort and remain in the destruction of the liminal state long enough to also hold creation, the paradox.

The notion that there is an emergent beauty on the other side of this terrible thing is outside of my view right now. I know this work, and I trust it. Yet, I cannot see how this will transform me before it pulls me under.

I know I cannot make the minutes move more quickly as the weight of this grief slows me down in every way. Every hour feels like a marathon, and I am grateful when time passes without having looked at the clock. But to what end? The next hour holds more reminders of the one thing that has changed within all that is familiar. The sameness of everything without him is a constant bittersweetness, and anything entirely new is terrifying. Yet, I must be here. Bypassing is not an option for me, not now, after all that I have learned over a lifetime of moving through my own grief and loss, change and transition.

So, while I am not in the milliseconds of the afternoon of April 4, 2023, I am in the minutes and the hours of each day where time is stretching me toward my next, raw, uncomfortable edge.

Stretching Time