The Power of a Day
You just have to wait it out.
If there’s one thing everyone on Earth could agree on, it’s that a single day holds intense power.
A day can bring with it new life while simultaneously taking other lives away.
A day can be your most beautiful experience while being someone else’s ugliest.
A single day could be the one thing someone desperately wishes to relive, just to see if it’s possible to change the outcome.
Hindsight can be cruel.
I find myself frequently reflecting on the day my son died. If you have experienced sudden, unexpected loss, I’m guessing you’ve also done plenty of the same.
Mine was a stunning day full of memorable moments. I captured it all in photos in this beautifully heartbreaking story I wrote a few weeks later.
At the tail end of my beautiful day, he and I video-chatted while he cooked his dinner in a city eight hours away. We laughed, cracked jokes, and talked about him coming home for Christmas in a couple of months.
During our call, his phone battery died and the chat was cut short. No talk to you later, no I love you. Just the assumption that he’d call back after charging his phone. He always calls back.
But this time he didn’t, and neither did I. That was the last time I ever saw his face and heard his voice. Unbeknownst to both of us, it was his last day on earth.
After learning his approximate time of death I analyzed my own sequence of events from the same evening.
I concluded that I was most likely basking in a hot bubble bath in the loft at the mountain chalet I was retreating in. While my son was dying.
It’s a brutally jagged pill to swallow.
Why didn’t I try calling back? Could one small action have changed the outcome of that day?
I’m sure many of us have asked ourselves the same question.
In my quest to find some inner peace I’ve recently explored meditation. I’ve always thought it to be airy-fairy but others have said that it can be life-changing.
Who couldn’t use a change of life, right?
While listening to a daily meditation from the Calm app, the narrator, Jay Shetty, talked about ‘a day.’ It’s a measure of time that we live by like no other.
He says:
“Our language is filled with aspirations about the day:
Seize the day. Win the day. See things as clear as day.
We pass judgments such as:
I had a good day. I had a bad day.
We even have bad hair days.”
The most challenging event we’ve ever faced happened in the span of just one day. Then we struggle to manage our emotions and lives every single day following.
Loss has the power to strip away all the happy moments we’ve experienced in the past or ever hope to in the future.
It creates self-doubt. It makes us question whether we’ll ever be able to smile again. And it makes us ask, “Where do I even begin?”
It’s a waiting game.
‘The day’ also has the power to help rebuild each of those happy moments, one by one. We just have to wait through enough days so it can happen. And trust me, a waiting game it is.
There’s no time span carved in stone but you’ll know it when you feel it.
You’ll feel it when you wake up one day with confidence that you can go grocery shopping instead of skipping the shower and ordering takeout.
You’ll feel it when you answer the phone rather than reject the call.
You’ll feel it when you choose a comedy on Netflix rather than a tragedy.
No matter what it is for you, you’ll know it when you feel it because that’s the power of each day.
I guarantee you’ll find some inspiration and beauty in this story. I know I did when I wrote it.