A Morning, An Afternoon and a Night

By Doug Forbes

It’s 2:14 a.m. on a Wednesday morning.

Elena emailed me these figures not long after Roxie died.

Roxie lived for:

• 2,397 days

• 207,100,800 seconds

• 3,451,680 minutes

• 57,528 hours

• 342 weeks and 3 days

Numbers are deceiving. They read long but they live short.

Roxie was here for a tick-tock, for a blink. She came into the living room, walked out and never came back.

To most of us, Life is speed-of-sound fast, especially when you have children.

But when your child disappears before she even has a chance to fully appear, Life abruptly rolls painfully slow. A car with four flats tires. An excruciating sore throat. An imperative phone call that never, ever rings through.

We now mourn time. We mourn morning after morning without the mornings we were used to for 2,397 days.