When I think back on when a certain event occurred sometime in the past, I think, was Grant alive or dead then?  Oh that's when he was alive, so it must have been around this time. Or, oh Grant was dead when we did that. Now our life timeline is separated into before Grant died and after his death. After death, A.D. 

When I got married my life timeline was divided for the first time in a big way.  It became before meeting Grant and after.  The memories come up from before I met him and I think, well that was before I met Grant. Life before Grant seemed like a dream that was fleeting.  Life before Grant was like a preparation to be with my life partner and finally begin my real life. My life before Grant was gone as soon as I found him because my new life started. Life feels so much more my true life with Grant.

What I was meant to grow into with him is so much more real to me than what life was before him.  I couldn’t imagine life without him. When I think of before I met Grant, my mind inserts him into my life as if he’d been there all along, even though he wasn’t. It felt like he had always been there. 

Now that he’s not here anymore and won’t be again, it’s hard to remember what life was like with him, because being without him is so much more real than that life that was with him. Now, before Grant feels more real again because my life is without Grant again.  Now the life with Grant feels like the fleeting dream. 

Did it even exist?  Then I look at these 4 boys we had and think it must have existed. I couldn’t have made these babies on my own.  Even science says that’s not possible, so he must have existed.  He must have been my husband, he must have been their father.  They look like him, act like him.  They are evidence of him.  

Those babies, they made another new timeline when they arrived just like Grant had done when he entered my life.  Us before kids and Us after kids.  It wasn’t me before kids or me after kids, it was US, because now we were more like one.  Time was divided up by which baby had been born and how old that child was. Now, we had 2 big timeline divisions; before Grant and then according to the birth of each child. 

My whole life is divided up in time by Grant and each baby.  That’s how I came to measure time.  Now another event has forever changed the way my time is perceptualized.  The timeline tick from which I measure everything now is when Grant was alive vs. after he died.

I look at pictures of me before Grant died. I think, “Awwww… that wife had a husband.” I see those boys in real life now and in pictures from before and I can easily tell what was taken after Grant died. I think, ’Those boys don’t have a dad,’ that picture was taken A.D. 

This new division in time is there and it's divided by pain this time. I can see it in the eyes of the subjects in the photos.  The ones who know loss and the ones who don’t and they are all us.  Our family time frame isn’t how the world measures time. Ours is set with how life events affect us. We experience time related to how time has affected our lives.  It’s not all bad in this new reality.  There are beautiful things that have come A.D.  However, it still remains, this life is now A.D. 

We never forget that.