Quantifying is useless.
Unless you can hold it in your hands or see it on a screen, unless you can physically add and subtract, then the concept of more and less is abstract and relative.
You can't measure emotions. Joy and grief are siblings in the same house, but their shades can look like contrasting colors on different people.
Unless the feeling is yours, and unless you can compare this to how you felt on another day or in another season, you really can't compare it at all. And certainly not against someone else.
You can't measure grief. You can't keep score. You can't discount your loss because someone else's may seem greater. Grief is grief, loss is loss, joy is joy. They are not mutually exclusive, and they can't stand tall against one another.
"My husband died 6 days ago."
"My husband died three months ago."
"My husband died ten months ago."
As the last three words change with time, somehow there is an assumption that the first three words might matter less.
So, I have stopped quantifying the timeline.
It's not a bar graph. It's a kaleidoscope.
1 comment:
"My son died 6 years ago." It feels the same to me, no matter what number I am forced to insert or how many times I say it.
It seems that as time passes people you meet expect you to be "all better" because in reality, my son has been gone longer than he was alive... and while it's true "life goes on", I will never be healed of this heartache that lives in my chest.
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