5 months.

5 months today...  Why does it effect me like it does?  Does another month gone by make any real difference?  Does it change anything that's happened?  Make things better or worse?  Is it any easier to lay in bed and look over on my side, trying my hardest to envision him, to will him back to life, but see the emptiness there? To know, even still, and for the rest of my life, he's gone?

What is time that it should take me further and further from the man I love, who loved me, from the family we were, from the memories we made?

Do all wounds heal with time, as people often say?  Can time erase what was and what can never be?  Can it change the mind and heart so that it will one day be okay?  Okay that my husband died so young? was taken by death like a stealth in the night? swept out of our lives, out of our home? taken to a place beyond our grasp? outside the realm of what we can reach?

It's just another month gone by... Another month with the sting of neverness and void, the cruelty of a life that continues to move, torturing me with the mystery of time....  

Is death made easier by the promise of time? That, yes, we shall see him again someday!?  Does the promise of time bring peace to my heart, gladness to my life, joy to my soul?  Perhaps, but no.  It's a cruel trick.  He's alive, yes, my other half.  There's a oneness, still, yes it lingers still.  But it is beyond my grasp, further than my reach, outside my world, yet closer still... Alive, but behind the veil.

And the empty gap seems to generate unwanted energy, a cold, burning pressure called neverness...

Lynn, can I see you now?  Do you see me?  People tell me that you do.  People say, "He's still here."  In some ways I think it's true.  In some ways I know you're there, praying for me and for the girls...  But you're gone.  You've left this realm of time, time that enslaves me still.  You are unreachable to me, just beyond where I can grasp.

I look down at my wedding rings.  How long will I wear them?  How long, when I know it's over and he's gone?  How long when they torture me with all they represent?  ...neverness, all that was and is not, all that can never be.

Time - It won't stop; it keeps on going, unforgiving, unrelenting.  The gears and brakes are gone...  Farther back and farther yet, back into the dimming past.  The gap begins to gape... Must we all be swept forever on, away, beyond, beauty lost, and love, sorrow hard on sorrow, until the measure of our losses has been filled?*

Just another month.  Another month of neverness.

*Lament for a Son, by Nicholas Woltertorff