14 Weeks

Today marks 14 weeks.

It's been 14 weeks since our lives changed forever.

Last year, I tore my bicep tendon and had surgery to repair it. 14-16 weeks was the recovery period. I was so pissed that the recovery would be so long...

I could never have imagined 14 weeks feeling like 14 days. Or even 14 minutes.

Traumatic grief dismantles your perception of time. Time stands still for the grieving. It stands still and keeps you locked in a room where the worst thing you can imagine just happened.

It's like a prison in your mind. You helplessly watch the world go by. The confusing thing is that you're not actually in a prison, so the world goes by while you're in it.

Everyone else keeps moving.

Calendars turn. Seasons change. People ask what's next for you, like there's a next. And I nod, and I answer, and some part of me is still standing on that road on May 29th, watching it happen.

Both things are true at once. I am here, in week 14, doing the things a person in week 14 does. And I am also nowhere. Frozen at the exact second it happened, replaying it, unable to walk out of that room even though my body walks through every other room in the house every day.

That's the prison. Not bars. A room with no door, built out of one moment, and I carry it with me into every other moment. I can be at dinner, at work, in the car, and some part of me never leaves that road. The world doesn't wait for me to catch up. It just keeps going, and I watch it go by from inside a place that isn't moving at all.

All the while, I am frantically trying to hold on to anything. I find myself physically clinging to the pendant with Ryan's ashes around my neck throughout the day. His shrine in the living room keeps collecting more items. The ink on my arm, to keep him close.

It's completely irrational behavior. I know that. None of it changes anything. But here I am, reaching for whatever I can hold that still has him in it.

14 weeks have passed. And even though I am 14 weeks from the day I lost my son, I'm still there. Friday, May 29th, 2026.