Grief and Time Travel

I'm sitting in the back of an Uber on my way to an appointment that took a full year to get. A routine medical thing, nothing life-threatening… but it’s at the university hospital. That hospital. And the moment we turned onto the road that leads to it, my body reacted before my mind even caught up. I begin my time travel. One minute I’m watching the city move past the window. The next, I’m three years back in time.

December 29th, 2022.

The drive we took with John.

The one Rayna navigated with such steady care while her father sat beside her (no ambulances, our system is so taxed). He was frustrated, fragile, exhausted, and slipping away from us even then. A drive that felt like it changed everything. But the truth is it wasn't the drive, the changes where already unfolding long before that drive.

Today, in this car, my stomach turns the same way it turned then. I feel the tightness in my throat. The pressure behind my eyes. That shaky, nauseous feeling that comes when your body remembers something you wish it could forget.

Grief has a way of pulling you through time without asking permission. Who knew we would be grieving time travellors.

I haven’t been back to this hospital since those days with him. And the closer we get, the more vivid everything becomes—not just the memories, but the sensations. My mind begins animating the smell, the air, the exact heaviness of that winter. It’s astonishing how the body can reconstruct a moment with such accuracy that it almost feels real.

Why do our minds do that?

Why does grief trace old paths with such precision and others seems so far away and unclear? But not this moment, never this moment it's always clear and painful.

Then—an unexpected turn.

As we get closer, the driver turns, and for the first time I really look at the address. It's not the same building. Thank God. I'll never be ready to walk through those doors. Not the main hospital at all. It's in the details....Kath read don't skim.

But my appointment is close to the Cross Cancer Institute. Oh God, that realization hits just as hard. Because I had been a patient there 8 years ago when I had cancer and I got the cure. I am cancer free. We never got to take the man I loved for 44 years there, it was too late for a cure. Too late for any saving him. Too late for hope.

As we drive pass the hospital, I shake my head and whisper in my chest, I wish this had never happened. I wished we knew sooner, I wish things had been different...I wish, I wish, I wish. I wish he were the one driving me here, not a stranger and I wasn't alone in this back seat where this memory ambushes me.

We arrive at the building, not the building that holds my deepest trauma—but the ache is still here, raw and familiar. What a miserable trip down memory lane

I close my eyes. Hands pressed into my chest.

My breath pulled up through my shaking.

I can do this, I whisper inside myself.

I love you. I miss you. I wish you were here. This is a big appointment, and I’m nervous. I wish you could just hold my hand. I don't really need anything else.

But that won't happen. I need to be my own person, I'm definitely not as good as he was.

And then, his voice shows up inside my head, not in sound, but in knowing:

You can do this. You know you can. Look at everything you’ve done. Kath, I miss you too. I love you always have, always will.

The tears come. They aren't drowning me—just grounding me in the knowing that I am loved by him and somewhere he is with me.

I wipe those tears before stepping out of the car. I need to focus on what's ahead of me now.

And then, out of habit, I tell myself, “Don’t get lost.”

Because truly—I have no sense of direction. I get lost everywhere. He was my true north. But in moments like this, it means something deeper.

Don’t get lost in the memories that try to swallow you whole. Acknowledge them.

Don’t get lost in the grief that resurfaces without warning. Sit with it.

Don’t get lost in the version of me who lived those final days with him—because today is not that day, they'll be plenty of time to revisit her because I know she has something to teach me.

I walk toward the entrance. One breath and one step at a time. I can do this, I am doing this. He was right. Sometimes I think he looks down and smiles and says "I told you so"

Yeah, you did and I'm doing it. I haven't got a choice.

It was a long day. It was a lot and a lot to process. I saw so many people and answered so many questions. I'm exhausted and now on the ride home I remember driving home from the hospital each night without you. Not fully realizing one day I'd be alone without you always.

The sadness I feel now is for all the things you've missed and all the things you're going to miss. I grieve the future we we will never get to share.

John, I miss you and love you forever and always.