When death happens out of sync with the circle of life, a strange type of time mapping begins – at least it did for me. It started with identifying current time in hours since Kalei’s death, rather than the actual clock time itself. It was not 6:00 o’clock or 10:00 o’clock; it was 10 hours since she died and then 14 hours since she died and so on.

Far too soon, I had to acknowledge the word ‘day’ in my new time perspective. At 8:05 AM every morning my mind would remind me it was one day and then two, three, four, five and finally six days since her earth life ended. Just when I was learning how to manage days, I was forced to acknowledge the word ‘week’. I asked myself, how can it be a whole week? She just died a heartbeat ago! With the chaos of the funeral over and the rest of the world gone back to their regular lives, I felt very alone with the profoundness of time in that moment.

Another major grief date was the change from weeks to one month. I asked myself, how can it be a whole month? She just died a heartbeat ago. One month seemed so much longer than four weeks! I found it hard to believe I had managed to keep living for that long. You see, unless I was in La La Land (Chapter 8), I wanted to die. As a matter of fact, in the early days I was pretty sure that I would not make it much past her funeral. That I was still able to function in the Regular Universe one whole month after her death came as a surprise to me.

Soon enough, like a run-a-way freight train, time took me to what would have been Kalei’s 17^th birthday five months after her death. Again, thanks to La La Land, I was able to hold a birthday party for her. We all did our best to pretend it was a real birthday and Kalei was present, even if only in spirit. While the night felt special and I am glad I did it, the pain of that experience brought me to my knees the next day when the hollowness of the event kicked in. This time I asked myself, God why can’t you bring her back?

Her one year death anniversary seemed to mark the end of the grieving process for the rest of the world. Like bookends, her funeral at one end and the one year death anniversary at the other, their grieving process established clear start and finish dates. At first that change felt like abandonment because I thought everyone would continue keeping a dead Kalei as big a part of their lives as I did. I was wrong and rightfully so. Her place on their future blackboard (Chapter 24) would keep that from happening. Alone or not, I still asked myself, how can it be a whole year? She just died a heartbeat ago. 

The instant life left my child’s body; I was thrown into The Lifetime I Could Not Imagine and time took on a significance that was and continues to be, new to me. Not only do I have to live through a series of imaginable but can-never-be milestones on behalf of my child, but I am continually being introduced to mind bending unimaginable ones. An example of the latter will occur on March 16, 2018. On that day, Kalei will have been dead longer than she lived. For many years that moment has been identified on my time map. Outside of a grieving parent, I don’t know that anyone else would know a day like this even exists. 

Whether it is knowing time by the heartbeat or being a mom able to identify the date I spoke of above, the profoundness of grief time is something everyone should know about. Perhaps a kind word or phone call to someone you know or love on one of those days might be a much appreciated gift.