Dear friends and readers,
So many meanings to the word time.
As I realized I was coming up to June 1st on my calendar, time to do the bills (as we say), it came to me that I have no sense of 8 months as continuous time since the Admiral died. I know I’ve been alive and I think were Jim to have been alive this past six months would have been lived. I would have memories of a continuing time consciousness in which I was living, doing this, doing that. Now I have memories of doing this, doing that, but the events do not exist in any sense of life. I have not lived a life since he died. I’m in a sort of limbo where time passes and I can point to events, things, objects, people I’ve seen, experienced, but I’ve not had 8 months of life. In a way it’s like I’m not alive but endlessly filling whatever it is that we live through, absorbing myself sometimes, even enjoying this or that, but as to any life lived, not at all. Half a year of sheer existing. All utterly unreal and yet unbearably real since I am often what I call coping.
There are Renaissance sonnets meditating love-griefs where the poet (or poetess) says he (or she) is and is not alive. So now I understand these.
Anna Maxwell Martin as Elizabeth in Death Comes to Pemberley (near the end of the 2nd 3rd of the mini-series, after Darcy has blurted out a deeply hurtful phrase at her)
Sylvia