All we have is time

Reconstructing life after significant loss affects our sense of time

For years, first as a very busy single person in my early 30s, balancing a part-time job during the week, a full-time seminary class load during the evenings and a part-time pastoral appointment every weekend with two churches, time was at a premium in my life. Every minute seemingly needed to be accounted for, and there was little excess to consider.

Shortly after this period in my life, Claudia and I were married, began to form our family though adoption, and then with both of us working (she nearly full-time, mostly from home, and I full-time as a pastor), we were busier than ever. That pace remained the same for nearly thirty years.

About two years ago things began to shift in our lives. The last of our adult children and their children moved from our home, our house became hauntingly quiet and Claudia and I began to adjust to a life with each other and the work we both loved. The evenings were quieter, the days more predictable, I began to feel calmer, and sometimes even a little bored, but in a blessed sort of way.

Then, as we were adjusting to this next chapter of life, Claudia’s unexpected “significant brain event” and consequent death collapsed my understanding of time. I no longer had to consult with her to shift our schedules. There wasn’t anyone who cared that much about where I was or what I was doing. There were fewer moments spent outside of my work life, but it was fine enough because I had a major, half-way-across-the-country move to prepare for.

So much happened in such a few compacted weeks that my head spun with all the changes and possibilities before me. As hard as it was to leave my Virginia life behind, there was also some relief in doing so, because I knew I could not attempt to rebuild my life with so many lingering memories of the years I had spent with my wife there.

Now that I have settled into a new chapter of my life, more than a thousand miles away from where I had been for nearly a decade, it feels sometimes like all I have is time. After three decades of active busyness with so many things, there is just so much time. I am reminded of one of the grief support group members I met a few months ago who expressed her sense of loss as: “What am I going to do now?” By which she meant, how would she fill her days and find meaning after providing care for her husband for the previous few years.

I know that even if Claudia were alive, I would probably still have some struggles with knowing how to best use my time, in this pre-retirement stage of life, but I always had the assurance that at the blink of an eye, Claudia would have some new opportunity for me. At that time I thought what I really wanted was fewer responsibilities and commitments, but I am finding that now I relish the opportunity to be meaningfully engaged in the world around me.

My work as a pastor, of course, takes much of my day’s time. A pastor can never pray enough or read enough or visit enough or plan enough. Without appropriate boundaries (for my congregation’s and my own sake), I could well work 80 or more hours a week in my pastoral life, but I don’t think that’s healthy for them or for me.

I spend some time, expectedly, with my new canine companion Otis, but really he will go with me wherever I go, so it’s only a matter of deciding where “not” to bring him, not if he will want to accompany me. It doesn’t require much of my time at all in an extraordinary sense to be a pet partner.

I am discovering how the phrase “all we have is time” hits differently now that it is me alone in my world. My children are pretty well grown up (my oldest son will be 40 this year and my youngest son 27), my grandchildren are doing fairly well, I see my sons who live in my community on a regular basis, I occasionally drive to see the others.

But I am still trying to figure out what time looks like in a stage of my life where I had anticipated spending it with Claudia, experiencing new things and navigating new vistas together without the strain of multiple important responsibilities. It’s just not quite the same now to have so much more flexibility and freedom to do whatever I choose, but to be on my own in so doing.

I often find myself asking, “I wonder what Claudia would do in this situation?” And I know the answer without hesitating, because we had talked about it at some length over the years.

She would throw herself even more into the work she felt called to do. She would continue to have lunch with colleagues and friends nearly every day of the week. She would be busy tapping out texts and making telephone calls and connecting with children and grandchildren. And she would work. Hard. Harder than ever.

She would, in a few words, become more of who she had always been.

I am finding that part of life reconstruction following the death of a loved one is rediscovering myself all over again, and that is a rather overwhelming process. I am no longer part of another’s life in quite the same way, and who I am can no longer be buttressed by the strength of another, nor humbled but another’s shortcomings.

I don’t know how long this process of redefinition may take, but I suspect it will occupy my attention for the rest of my remaining days.

Fortunately — and overwhelmingly — all I have is time, so I need to learn to embrace the reality and remain open to what Love whispers in my ear.