"We've got time all wrong, you see," says Steven. His head in Elizabeth's lap. "Don't you see?"
"It wouldn't surprise me," says Elizabeth. "We get most things wrong, don't we?"
"Quite so," agrees Steven, his voice quiet. "Nail hit well and truly on the head there, old girl. We think time travels forward, marches on in a straight line, and so we hurry alongside it to keep up. Hurry, Hurry, mustn't fall behind. But it doesn't, you see. Time just swirls around us. Everything is always present; the things we've done, the people we've loved, the people we've hurt—they're all still here."
Elizabeth strokes his hair. "That's what I've come to understand," says Steven.
"Everyone who dies is alive. We call people dead because we need a word for it, but dead just means that time has stopped moving forward for that person. Do you understand? No one dies, not really."
Elizabeth kisses the top of his head and tries to inhale him. "I understand this," says Elizabeth, "for all the words in the world, when I go to sleep tonight, my hand won't be in yours. That's all I understand."
"You have me there," says Steven. "I have no answer for that."
"Grief doesn't need an answer any more than love does," says Elizabeth.
—Richard Osman: The Last Devil to Die
Holly Margl is the award-winning author of Witnessing Grief; Inviting Trauma and Loss to Our Coaching Conversations, An Enneagram Perspective, coach, coach mentor, and trainer specializing in grief, trauma, and the Enneagram.
