Marking Time

Time is a strange thing.  We know how long a minute is, and how many minutes are in an hour, and how many hours make up a day, and yet a moment is so intangible.  Time is but a series of moments.  And moments pass at different speeds.  This year feels in some ways to have flown by.  And yet, when I survey it as I have done recently, I can acknowledge how much has happened.  How much has been achieved, and how much growth has occurred. 

I wanted to be present with myself and to mark the day in a way that felt right for me, right now.  My feelings showed me the way and guided me as I allowed more moments to unfold, and to envelop and hold me.  I felt peaceful with the reality that it was a whole year ago that we finally said goodbye.  It was a long goodbye and, in many ways, it was last year that I was faced with the biggest loss:  the gap between the mother had known, and the woman I went to visit in those final months.

I was struck by the energy with which the day met me.  Having sat and looked at some beautiful photographs of the two of us the night before, I woke and enjoyed a morning that resembled many others:  I swam.  This time I swam for her.  I swam for she who first introduced me to the water and she who nurtured my love for the element that has become such an important part of who I am.  I swam for a long time, and enjoyed each length to the full.  The sun shone bright, and I felt bright, luxuriating in the fact that there was no goal and no plan:  I swam, and I swam, and I swam. 

The day was what it was.  It was just that and it was just right.  There was no plan, because these things can’t be planned.  I consulted my internal barometer and trusted the accuracy of its reading.  In so doing, it felt as though I got it just right, and yet of course there is no right or wrong.  Mourning is a process whose path can be neither predicated nor measured.  The best way to do it, is the only way to do it:  employing all of the senses and prioritising nothing over anything.