Time…is a word that, over the past ten days I have really started dislike. What is time? How can we quantify it? For a child who doesn’t have a long attention span, time is 3 minutes in a time out. For an adult, time moves too quickly. Not enough of it. Meetings are too long, visits with friends are too short.

Time. It is about an hour drive from Oklahoma city to Wanette Oklahoma. How do I know that? That was the amount of time we were on the phone when Heath was driving home from the city, from a meeting with his clients, from work, or from dinner with Brad.

Time. During these drives there was never a dull moment. Lots of swearing as Heath would be cursing out a driver who was driving too slow in the fast lane (there is an actual law in Oklahoma), a daily debrief from our work days, to the mundane questions about what you ate today. Many of the times there was an interruption of a call coming in, which would result in a call back. Never minded as time was always set aside for these calls.

Time. Talking all the way home and knowing when Heath was home because all of sudden I would hear, “Okay Abby, go and make pee pee”, “get it done”. I knew he was home. Home sweet home. Conversation usually continued with another call back.

Time. Now it is up to me to make use of this time that I have now have back at the end of every day. Do something that will fill up the time. Now you can see why I dislike the word time? It is now an uncomfortable part of my day.

Keeping with the theme that music really is always on my mind, I am reminded that Hootie and the Blowfish have a song called time, which I think is a perfect place to end today’s post.

TIME

I know that a lot of people have a love hate relationship with social media. Facebook specifically. I know that I do. Over the past couple of years when I have been on vacation I have made conscious efforts to take a self imposed sabbatical. Yet, the past week it has been my lifeline. My connection to the people in my circle to express my sadness. The outpouring of love and support has no measure. Every single one of you has helped me start to get through this very dark time in my life. I will forever be grateful.

To be honest, Heath probably would have hated it. Which is funny since he was a social media manager in his professional life. He spent hours picking and creating posts for his various clients yet never posted on his personal page. He would carry his phone like a bible checking constantly to ensure that his response times always stayed in the high range.

I take a lot of pictures. Okay…I know many of them are of food! One thing I noticed was that on the trips that we took together the past 18 months there weren’t that many photos. As I am looking back on this now I realize it was because I just enjoyed being in the moment. As much time as we spent talking, there were many times where we didn’t talk at all.

I mentioned yesterday, in the Bahamas, I was reading Nothing Left unsaid and he was listening to the audio book. We sat overlooking the ocean for a couple of hours just reading and listening. I would make him pause to ask him what part he was at but that was it.

When we were in Jamaica it rained – quite a bit actually. One afternoon we were sitting in the outdoor covered restaurant rain pouring all around us. I was reading (love my vacation chick lit reads) and he was working. It was perfect. It is a memory that is in my mind without a photo yet I remember everything, including the smell of the warm Jamaican rain air.

Over the past week I have found the silence a challenge. If you knew Heath you know that he was never at a loss for words. He had very strong opinions and wasn’t afraid to share them with you. I learned that I was not a great debater and many times just conceded to change the topic.

Yesterday my “memory reminder” on Facebook reminded me that one year from now it is going to be all these posts and memories that will be coming up in my news feed. The photos will bring me joy but the posts will be like ripping the band aid off and feeling the raw pain like it is feeling now. I think I am going to be mindful of that moving forward.

I am going to continue to write as it brings me joy and helps the healing. You can actually “follow” the blog on the WordPress page so that when I write a post you will get an email that I have a story to share. There may come a time where I choose not to share my posts on social media. I hope you will all continue to follow my journey.

Have a great day and talk soon,

Lisa

#HeathLessons