Time Paradox

I've mentioned it before, I'm a huge General Hospital fan.  I've been watching since before I was a teenager and have gone on very few breaks.  I used to tape the episodes on our VCR, and now thanks to DVRs, I never miss an episode.  Some of the funniest lines I've heard have come from this show.  And some of the deepest.  A couple weeks ago Carly said the following:

Bad things happen fast, but we have to deal with them slow.

It struck all my brain cells and tugged at my heart.  I don't know that there is a better way to describe the tragedy that is losing your child.  This line hit me so hard, that I don't remember why Carly was saying this, and to whom.  Regardless, she is right.  Time often seems to be a paradox.  It moves at the same rate every day, yet sometimes it appears to go at the speed of light, and other times, it moves as slow as a snail.

The day Preston passed away was probably one of the slowest days I've ever lived through.  The ride to the hospital was excruciatingly slow.  The traffic didn't help.  It felt like we were in a time warp, when we spent time in the ER holding our little boy.  You could feel every second tick by, making it seem like the events that had unraveled weren't reality.  The next days, weeks and even months did not move much faster.  The endless nights of insomnia, of tossing and turning, of feeling like I was supposed to be doing something, only to be reminded that my routine had no more purpose were just that - endless.  There were moments of reprieve once the weekend came and I got some sleep, only thanks to Xanax.

Yet, it all happened in the blink of an eye.  One minute he was breathing, one second later he was not and it was over.  There was no warning.  There was no window of time where he could have been saved, as much as I would have liked to believe it.

The experience is similar when I think of being sick.  In the bat of an eyelash I was in excruciating pain caused by blockages in my intestines.  I was fine one day, I was not the next.  I made it through a day of work, but once I got home, it was now unbearable.  And again, dealing with it, I remember seeing the clock tick-tock by oh-so slowly.  The wait in the emergency room, which really was quick, felt like hours.  The wait for a doctor again, was probably minutes, yet it felt like a whole evening.  The wait for the administration of morphine for some relief, even longer.  The days without eating felt like weeks.  The week in the hospital felt like a month.  The recovery, it was actually slow, but it felt even slower because of everything I couldn't do.

Time can feel like torture.  Time can seem to have disappeared.  While I continue to heal on this journey of grief, it is an extremely slow journey.  I will continue to be on this journey for the rest of my days, I'm certain of it.  And still, it seems unreal that all this happened over 10 months ago.  It feels "wrong" that I'm approaching the one year mark of this terrible event that changed my life forever.  That same fact is scary, because it's been a long journey.  A painful journey.  A healing journey.

I fear, I will never understand time...