Marking Time
By Catherine Kornweibel
Counting the days; as a child, I’d count the days until Christmas; until my birthday; until the last day of school; or until school started again in the Fall.
Time must be coded in our DNA. The timing of our monthly period; timing of the length of a normal pregnancy.
Is it any wonder that our grief is marked by Time?
For me, it’s time and seasons. As I write this, it is exactly 14 days before the first anniversary of my husband’s death. It’s not just the calendar that confirms it. I feel it in the air; in the subtle change of seasons; in rapid oncoming of night. I feel as though Ted is going to die all over again.
Through this past year of grief, time and again I have experienced divine “interventions” that have stopped me in my tracks or lifted me out of a slough of despond. It’s been a manifestation of God’s word made evident in my life: Romans 5:6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.
The most remarkable occurred on May 6th, the last full day of a month-long cruise I took around Japan and back to Seattle. I suddenly realized that this would have been my mother’s 105th birthday. In a few hours, our ship would be turning eastward sailing past the Olympic Peninsula, past the exact beach where my mother had owned a house. I was writing in my journal, overlooking the rugged coast of British Columbia, when I received a lengthy text from one of my mother’s dearest friends. We haven’t communicated in years, except for the annual Christmas card. She was remembering my mother (even sent a photo of her) and acknowledging the deep loss I must be carrying from Ted’s death. Nancy had NO idea I was on a ship, about to pass by her community as well. I quickly exited the library, tears streaming down my face, went out on the deck, and sobbed. The two people who loved me the most on this earth were gone.
But, at just the right time, I received the perfect place and the perfect time to grieve. And the perfect assurance that I was not alone.