It Has Been With Me Longer Than It Was With Her

You worked it out in the car.

Something made you think of it, and you did the sum, and it came out that the plant has now been with you longer than it was ever with her.

And you sat there with that for a minute before you went in.

It is not a sad fact exactly. You could not say what kind of fact it is. It landed somewhere between an achievement and a betrayal and would not settle into either.

And it has come back three or four times since, at odd hours.

So here is what I want to do with that number, and it is not to make it mean something nicer.

I want to let it be a number.

Teach us to number our days

Moses writes a prayer in the Psalms that asks for something surprising, given what the psalm is about.

So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. (Psalm 90:12, King James Version)

So teach us to number our days.

You are doing exactly what that prayer asks for, and counting the years of a thing has never once been a morbid act in the hands of God. Psalm 90:12 says so teach us to number our days, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says that over a woman sitting in a car doing arithmetic.

The psalm around that verse is unsparing about how short a life is. It is not a comfortable psalm and it does not try to be.

And in the middle of it, the prayer is not: help us not to think about this. It is: teach us to count.

Counting is treated there as a spiritual act. Something that leads to wisdom rather than away from it, and something that has to be taught, which implies most people do it badly or avoid it altogether.

You were not doing something unhealthy in that car, and the numbering of years has never once been forbidden to anybody who loved somebody. The Spirit of God is what turns counting into wisdom rather than into weight, and Psalm 90 is where the teaching is asked for.

Why it will not settle

Now the practical half, and it is about why that number keeps coming back.

It will not settle into a feeling because it is not one fact. It is two, and they are pulling in opposite directions.

The first is: I have kept this going for a long time. That is true, and it is quietly remarkable, and nobody has ever said it to you.

The second is: she is further away than she was. That is also true, and every month it becomes more true, and no amount of good keeping changes it.

Both of those arrived in the same number, which is why it will not resolve. You have been trying to decide which one it is, and it is both, and it is going to stay both.

You are holding two true things that do not cancel each other, and a fact with two sides has never once been a fact that needed settling. What is written in Psalm 90:12 asks to be taught to count rather than to be spared the count, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets two things stand at once.

And here is what it is not, which is the part worth saying clearly.

It is not evidence of getting over her, and it is not a measure of how much she is missed, and it is not something the plant is telling anybody about the state of a grief.

You have not been sent a report by a windowsill, and a count of months has never once been able to say one word about what you feel. Psalm 90:12 asks for the numbering to be taught, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps a number from becoming a message.

It is how long a plant has been in a house. That is genuinely all it is.

You are not being sent a message by an arithmetic result, and no number of months has ever once been able to report on what you feel. The Spirit of God is the one who takes meaning off a sum, and Psalm 90 is the ground under the numbering.

Say it out loud once

So here is the instruction, and it is the smallest one in this set.

Say the number out loud. Once.

It has been here longer than it was with her. Whatever the actual figure is, say it plainly, in the room, at a normal volume.

That is it. Do not explain it, do not add a feeling to it, do not decide what it means.

And here is why. A fact that has only ever been thought keeps coming back at odd hours precisely because it has never been finished. Saying it out loud finishes the sentence. It puts the number in the room rather than in the back of your head, and things in rooms are much easier to live with. Then water it, and let it go back to being a plant.

You are able to close a sentence that has been open for months, and one number said out loud has never once been the same as making a thing of it. Psalm 90:12 asks to be taught to number the days, and the Holy Spirit is the one standing with a woman saying a figure in an empty kitchen.