Time keepers

As a griever for a lost love I am by default a keeper of time.  I mark Thursday afternoons with a whole new lens; I notice the seasons change more so than in the past. I notice the winter coming on, the dark afternoons and early evenings that will cocoon me easier, the joy of summer that I am afraid to fully feel. And the bittersweet crisp air of Autumn - his favorite time of year. I notice what it means when spring comes around. The season of love when all things are new and fresh, full of hope and love is in the air. It does not go by without a pang, never mind that it is also the time of year my husband died. I keep in my heart the seasons that have lapsed since his death (it's the fourth spring he missed, he'd be out in the yard raking, cleaning). Wow, four really?? Time to me feels like it zips by at an extraordinarily fast pace now. I have this sense of it running out. I can't figure out if that is because I am intimately acquainted with death or because I am getting older, or if it is just me and how I am. I remember before Terry died, the month and weeks leading up to his death I was obsessed with dying, thinking it was me that I was on the way out. I see that death anxiety now for what it was, a unknowing of knowing.

But this death anxiety persists sometimes, and I have this sense that I have to make right and fix and change my life before it is too late. I end each day with regret that it didn't happen yet, whatever "it" happens to be on this specific day. I sigh I lament  oh shit  this or that has not taken place and there goes one more day when I missed the opportunity to do ___________.  It's a shitty way to live, the exact opposite of the all profound and smugly right "live in the moment" bullshit mantra, the "all we have is now" hijacked Buddhist philosophy.

For me right now it is impossible to live in the moment. What I have in my life now might be what inmates on death row feel? Or maybe a person diagnosed with a terminal illness? But I am not terminally ill (although in some sense we all are aren't we?)  yet I have this oh shit here it comes and I am not ready mentality. This -I have not lived and time's a wasting-philosophy. This urge to quickly fix, remedy, mend, repair, rejuvenate, reconcile, ameliorate, correct "it" before times runs the hell out. Don't you get it, why can't you do it, you know it but can't seem to move forward Sussey-what the fuck? It's pathetic in a way. So I keep time instead. I count the days since his death, not the accomplishments or the changes or the growth or the backsliding instead I count the days months and years. Like something magical will happen if a certain period of time passes.  And all that happens is time passes, and I am that much closer to it being over.  Yeah not good, not good.

Is there a stage of grief called stagnation? If not, there should be. I am in it. I am in a certain limbo or life in waiting. I recently went back on the antidepressants for the  oh 100th time. I surrendered to the constant negative thoughts, agitation and irritability and teary mornings and nights, to the dysthymia  and disinterest in life. Once again giving over to the fact that ok maybe the brain chemistry is off, those circuits of neurotransmitters of serotonin and norepinephrine aren't kicking in like they should be. But I have this other side that says, wait a minute depression is a stage of grief. It's normal to feel this. It is but I don't have to be depression do I? Frankly, I am tired of talking to my head about the difference so I surrendered. I will submit, I will watch the time go by and see if I still keep counting off the days like the gallows await. I will note the season of love go by, anticipate the summer in the hopes of fully feeling it without fear. I will keep track of the days you have been gone from me. For right now I do not know what else to do.