The Time Warp

I wrote this to make sense of a year (or two) that disappeared.

Grief fractures time, identity, and certainty - and life still insists on being lived.

If this feels familiar, I hope it offers a little company.

Read gently.

Today I asked Jon how long Jared had been Director of NBCCD.

“A year?” he said.

That’s how it felt. That’s what I had thought.

Until I did the math. It had been two years.

It was December 2023. I had been tired. Burnt out. I had led a college through COVID and made tremendous changes. And it cost me my spark.

So, desperate for time off - and in recognition of how tired I was and how small covid had made our world - I transparently began my soft launch out of NBCCD. First, a two-month leave. Time for a couple of folks to try out the positions above them. Time for me to rest, restore, and look for my next gig.

We bought our car, Alice, turned her into a camper van, and headed out on a 16,000-kilometre road trip. We wanted to shake off the COVID dust, experience joy and adventure - and, half-jokingly said just in case Trump got back in, this would serve as our farewell-to-America tour.

It was everything we needed.

North Carolina. Georgia. Florida. Mostly Texas.

BBQ. Whooping cranes. Alligators. Slow campground mornings. Buc-ee’s.

A vegan, Tesla-driving rancher. Hiking. Wandering. Exploring.

I soaked it all up. Time with Jon and Abbey. The easiness.

Joy, returning.

Returning home. A job interview across the country. Hopefulness for a coming change.

Twenty days after the road trip ended, my mom died.

Suddenly.

After a long, slow decline.

Two hours later, the call that I didn’t get the job.

The next day: my first-ever gallbladder attack - nearly an ER visit - while packing for a funeral and a sea-kayaking trip I was leading in Baja. Grief and gear, side by side.

Saying goodbye in a flurry: family who hadn’t shared space in years, a big funeral led by four pastors and me. One game of Catan. One car stuck in the driveway.

At the airport, Jon and I went to different gates.

Him back to New Brunswick.

Me to Baja.

So hard. 

Back home, everything felt off. I went through the motions at work knowing I had mentally left months earlier. I decided to resign before securing my next job - telling myself it was to go support Dad. The truth was, I was done. The team was ready.

Then to BC for a keynote.

That morning, an email from Dad wishing me luck.

At the end of the day, I turned off Do Not Disturb. A voicemail from my sister: please call. Dad was in the hospital.

It had been four and a half weeks since Mom died. He had turned 90 in that time.

My flight that night had two legs. I got off after the first in Toronto. Mart picked me up. Jon drove out with Abbey. Maggie and George came too.

Daily hospital visits. Heavy conversations. Dad said he was ready to go. I said, I know.

Four days later, he died.

The day before his death though he had perked up and joked, “Guess you’re going to end up with a roommate after all.”

When I missed an early-morning call from the hospital, I assumed it was Dad - ready to be discharged.

It wasn’t. He was gone.

Three days later, another gallbladder attack. Overnight in the ER.

And thus begins the lost year.

The year that doesn’t compute in my memory bank - or on my calendar.

An interment service. Their ashes buried side by side. A smaller gathering this time.

And then the question: What are we doing?

We weren’t needed in Parry Sound anymore - not to support Dad.

But I needed to be there. Close to home. To their things. To their grave.

So back to New Brunswick to pack up the farmhouse and eco-house, get renters in, and then back to Parry Sound. To a house full of them. Or at least their things.

Artifacts of long lives.

A burn mark hidden behind a scripture verse on Mom’s wall.

A photo I’d never seen of them before they were married - Mom was 14 in the photo (15 when she married him). She had lied and told Dad she was 18. 

His journals. March 20th: Maureen died today.

So many tears. So much sorting. Bag after bag to the Salvation Army and the dump. 

And still more.

We swam. Every day. Cold water to steady the mind.

Then gallbladder surgery.

Then two weeks of COVID - bedridden, watching every Olympic event imaginable.

August arrived. Who was buying the house? What were we doing? Why were we anywhere?

Back to New Brunswick. A bit of relief from the grief pressure cooker. But my memory was shot. Why did I walk into this room? What did I come here to buy? Decisions were hard.

Not working, in the paid sense - but my mind and heart were working overtime.

Then a contract in Parry Sound. A reason to return. Some money. Teaching job readiness. Loving it. But so exhausted.

We swam in a snowstorm.

It felt like saying yes to living.

The dead don’t want us to die with them.

There was laughter. A first glimpse of joy again.

Back to New Brunswick for Christmas. I couldn’t face that holiday in Parry Sound. A tearful goodbye to the house that would become my sister’s.

So… what exactly are we doing?

Job applications. Interviews. Shortlists. College president here. VPA there. No doors opening.

I went to Mexico. I wrote a book. I started an adventure education company.

What are we doing?

Why are we doing it?

I was homesick. Heartsick. Lost.

Let’s move to Parry Sound. Anywhere there. Maybe the house.

We bought it instead of my sister. (One sentence like it was easy. It wasn’t. None of the logistics of loss were easy.)

One year since Mom died.

Then our house sold.

Then we moved.

One year since Dad died.

They were old. I expected them to die. I never expected it would knock me flat like it did.

So now Parry Sound is home. Really?

Choosing place over profession for the first time in my adult life.

Jon worked for the town. I took another teaching gig. 

We planted flowers. Watched birds. Swam.

Then a mat-leave contract as campus administrator. From 75 employees and a $5-million budget to 1.5 employees and $200K.

Can my ego handle this? My patience? I like influence. I like control.

But I’m still tired. Still sad.

So I do it. And there is lots that's good.

We swim more. Paint walls new colours. Unpack boxes. Donate more bags to the Salvation Army.

Dad’s suit. Mom’s wedding dress.

Holiday Barbies Dad bought me every year get tucked into a cubby.

A wedding.

A funeral.

Friends with cancer diagnoses.

More visitors than we’ve had in ten years.

I turn 50.

We paddle. Forget the stove. Paddle again. Laugh. Walk. Sit by the woodstove and sip tea. Watch otters play on the ice. Become math competition chauffeurs to and from Toronto.

Yesterday I finished my last day of work in 2025 and feel soft and sad.

It was harder than I expected - being back in the workforce, putting myself out there every day. Trying to make a campus work. Trying to make my brain work.

Knowing what I was capable of. Wondering what I am capable of now.

Trying to understand this time warp - where surgery feels like five months ago and my parents’ deaths feel like nine months ago, when really a whole year needs to be added.

The lost year.

Grief’s a bitch, man.

I didn’t know.

Now I’m part of the club - the one that knows the awful knowing of losing loved ones. Though really, we all join eventually.

The silent club.

We don’t talk about it enough.

So here are my words. About walking through grief. And the lost year. And living on.