Lost in Time

I forgot to wash my hair. It was weird because I always did, every two days, for the most part, my whole life. I noticed because when I put my hair in a bun before bed it cramped up on my scalp like it was twisted in a way it hadn’t wanted. 

I guess I should wash it, I thought, before I crawled on top of my childhood bed, sleeping over the covers and only under a throw blanket that always crept up over my ankles. 

I slept and I didn’t sleep. I woke up and thought about eating. I ate and cried. I sometimes drank coffee, I sometimes forgot. I slept some more and then maybe read a little? I showered and texted friends. Suddenly, I was faced with a new day. I didn’t know the day, but it didn’t matter, really. 

Time stood still four years and roughly two months ago when I lost my dad. 

It was weird because it felt fake, like I was watching myself through a lens, grieving in ways I didn’t know I was capable of. Like I hadn’t studied it before so how did I know what mourning should be?

The day we said goodbye in our house, when his words turned to whispers as he held my hand, his oxygen tank packed up in the corner of our sunroom after doing all it could, I was trapped between the before and after of my life, in between time. Where just an hour before I was sending emails from the taxi speeding from midtown to the West Side Highway and over the bridge into New Jersey, apologizing to coworkers from my iPhone for having to leave work so early and that I’d see them tomorrow. 

Each day I frantically wrote down new memories, like if I didn’t I’d lose them and him, again. Family and friends came over and I sat and listened to stories. My mom and brother and I would sometimes order Chinese or make smoothies or try to tell funny stories. We didn’t leave the house much. We didn’t want to go anywhere, anyway. 

I remember sitting in the hammock in our yard for hours. And then sitting on the steps to the attic for hours, staring up at the old, massive antique fan built into the wall that looked like it could carry us all away. 

One day into the next into the next into the next, until it was a different day. One where I woke up with rosier cheeks and ideas to organize things. I had energy. The days became more structured with routines as simple as breakfast and a walk around the park. I changed my clothes and felt my body unclenching.

It happened slowly, but surely, as people told me it would — that time would catch up eventually and things would settle into a new normal. That I would learn again to live in the present and definitely know what day it was and my life would somehow morph into a new life, and I would enjoy it in a new way. 

Still, every once in a while, the second hand stalls just slightly, like an old battery giving juice to another moment. But I realize nothing’s wrong because I know this feeling — I’m just stuck in time briefly. And then I remember to wash my hair.