Unthinkable resilience! Why should I want to feel better? Is it okay to miss Daniel even though he is doing good things?
“Time will make it better,” they say, but what is time? It’s usually the enemy. Wasn’t it time that got us to the place that time must now heal? I think time is neither enemy nor healer. Relative, temporary, illusive, speeding, slowing, stalled: time is our least dependable marker. To God, time is not as we experience it here. So why is time a cornerstone for us? Perhaps time is just a name for something we can’t name, but surely makes us change.
For almost nineteen years, I set my clock by many of Daniel’s sounds. Lately, I slept after the ratcheting of the lock on the door at night and woke to the close of his basement bathroom door. I timed my days for dinner at 6:30 and the late night talks. And then time seemed to leave as I watched him move away from his youth, not just at obvious milestones, but late one night, sitting in silence with him in the dark after he said a final goodbye to someone. I felt it as he made requests for the care of keepsakes and friends and siblings. Time was not there in these moments, but there was something else. Reality? Presence? Arrival?
It’s always been a balance beam, this relationship. Don’t cling, let him fly, stay centered, don’t react, but never, until recently, be perfectly still. Be still, and realize that it was always God who was holding us up, (not I!) and that this support will continue. For God deals in the realities of people and relationships. How inconsequential is time compared to love!
I begin to understand that my Father in Heaven, not time, is the source of a resilience I can accept.
