199 Days: The Story of Jack

We arrived home at 11 o'clock at night. The house felt stale. It had that same smell from when we first bought it, a scent of absence. Walking into our house after being gone for six months was a little eerie. It was as if the world had stopped. Like life had just been lifted out and never returned. It was January 12^th, 2012.

I walked past his room without looking in. To me, it wasn't really his room; he had never even slept there. As I undressed to take a shower, I put my dirty clothes in the hamper. Inside I saw a pair of shorts I must have worn six months prior. I changed the sheets and towels that had just collected dust over time and turned the shower on. As soon as I stepped in, I saw the half used baby shampoo bottle sitting on the shelf. I had forgotten long ago about those normal days. I opened it and smelled that sweet scent. A flash of him on my shoulder with beads of water running down his back. I poured some of his shampoo in my hand and began to lather my hair. I wanted to smell it again, maybe it would put me right back there. As I washed my hair I noticed something else, his little blue soft bristle brush. I picked it up and found a few soft, tiny baby hairs stuck inside. It was like a piece of him still there.

We all measure everyday occurrences in our life by time. How many minutes it takes for a meal to cook, how many hours a flight is from one place to the next, how many days we have left until a vacation or how many months we have left of school. Our life is also measured in the years of how old we are. I too, measured my life in years, and counted experiences by seconds or hours. That was until my life go turned upside down and I had to measure life by just moments.

199 days may seem like a long time, but the greater scheme of things it is merely a small blip the rollercoaster of life. It is on average less than 1% of your life. 199 days is just the time it takes Summer to change to Winter.