I think about the concept of time a lot.
How it’s not linear. How it’s an illusion. How it’s simultaneous, with the past, present, and future all existing at once. How everyone and everything are all deeply interconnected in this enormous mess of existence.
And yet, we can’t fathom existing in a world without its preconceived structure because the alternative is just too inconceivable.
So does that make life tragic? Especially when you consider that in our basic and flawed human understanding, we only get to live it once?
I know that I still distinctly remember the day of your funeral and wanting to rip the lid of your coffin off its hinges and scream at you to wake up because it wasn’t enough. Twenty-one years isn’t nearly enough time to spend with someone that you love.
But no amount of time with the people that we love is ever enough, is it? In an alternative universe, you could’ve lived to be a hundred years old and I’d still beg for more, more, more.
Which is the entire point, isn’t it?
The fact is that at the end of the day, all we truly have is each other, the love that we share, the memories that we make, and the impact that we have while we’re here.
Time is made irrelevant because it doesn’t really exist. But we do. Even if it’s only for a brief moment.
So doesn’t that also make life beautiful, then?
I suppose there’s room for both.
After all, we must create space for tragedy because it’s an unavoidable aspect of life. And I by no means want to belittle the significance of that, even though it’s uncomfortable to sit with.
But I do know that I for one am sick and tired of being haunted by the past or worrying about the future.
I don’t want to dwell on the sadness of life when there’s so much joy and hope to be found instead. All that’s done is turned me into an angry and bitter person whose reflection I don’t like to see in the mirror.
So I’m choosing to focus on living moment by moment, measuring my life by love and experience rather than by time.
The person that I was before you died, the person that I am now, and the person that I’m to become are all the same. Just as you’re not really gone, but rather, still remain all around in every aspect of my life.
We existed, we loved each other, and we changed the course of one another’s lives for the better. That’s all.
As Eleanor Crain said in the finale of The Haunting of Hill House—”the rest is confetti.”
Today’s prompt comes from my own thoughts and feelings. Each of these letters to my dad are written candidly; unedited and unfiltered.