In the last month or so, there has been the first holiday without him—Canadian Thanksgiving, and then, impossibly, the two-month mark of his passing.
Both events were such stark, blunt brushes with the continuing flow of time. How could it be Thanksgiving? How could it be October 15? How is today November 1? Encountering these temporal markers is akin to when, as a child, in the typically warm tropical sea, I would dive beneath an incoming wave, feel the pulse and tug of the wave’s force, and sometimes, unexpectedly, be struck by a bright, cold wash of water.