Trauma and Grief Theme Analysis

The ‘when’ didn’t matter so much though, since I didn’t count minutes or hours any more. Days began when the sun rose and ended when it set. In between, the connections I made—like the ways I helped my dad, or didn’t help him—were what told me if I was moving forwards or backwards. As my Grandpa Jim had once said to me, Life doesn’t move through time, Bethie. Time moves through life.

And it’s OK to be sad, but you can’t love someone only with tears. There’s got to be laughter too.

“Catching wasn’t lying. I know she wasn’t.”

“I don’t think she was lying, precisely. Just telling the truth in a different way.”

“That’s your plan now? Hang about and hold your dad’s hand for the rest of his life?”

“No. Not exactly.” Even I could hear the lie in my voice.

She pointed to the door. “Get out of here, Teller. Come back if you ever want help doing what you’re supposed to be doing and move on.”

“Oh, it was a long time ago. Twenty years . . . seven months . . . six days. Not that I’m counting!” She tried to laugh, but it broke in the middle. “Sarah just vanished a week before her fifteenth birthday. She got off the bus from school, same as always, but she never made it home.”

[…]

Twenty years, seven months, six days . . . Was Dad going to be like this, decades from now when he talked about me? I didn’t want him making my death some kind of depressing mathematical reference point for his life.

“I told you what I thought about your dad, didn’t I?”

I wasn’t sure what that had to do with anything. “Yeah.”

“So we’re friends. Because friends always tell each other the truth. Even when it hurts.”

“I’m not telling you what happened to ask for help,” she said.

“Then why are you telling it?”

Catching drew her legs up to her chest and rested her chin on her knees. “To be heard.”

I was silent for a moment, thinking about that. Then I said, “Well, that kind of sounds like asking for help.”

“He eats what’s inside our insides. The colours that live in our spirits. Do you think I was always a grey girl?”

“It is your grey. Like mine, but not. Everyone’s grey is their own.”

I can endure.

As long as I remember where I come from.

Who I come from.

Mum had been there my whole life, helping me be a butterfly girl.

Maybe all hopeful thoughts were just someone who loved us, reaching out from another side. Which meant I could be there for my family even after I’d crossed over!

“You taught me to be fair, Dad, and what you’re doing’s not fair to anybody. Especially me. How do you think I’m going to feel if I’m the reason you make everybody miserable? And if you can’t see how wrong you are—how unfair you’re being, to yourself and everybody else—then you’re not the dad I know.”

I couldn’t bear to say that the colours weren’t real.

People can time travel inside their heads.

Remember into the past.

Imagine into the future.

But sometimes you can’t escape the now.

If I’m dead inside, I’m free.

No.

If I’m dead inside I’m dead inside.

“If you can name it, you can catch it,” she calls. “If you can catch it, you can fight it. Everything has its opposite. Remember!”

No ticking clocks.

Just choices.

They measure the distance between who we are and who we’re turning into.

“This gray’s yours,” I say. “My colours are mine. I’m not carrying your shame for what you did. Only my pride. For surviving you.”

“Of course you’re here at the end. So what? It’s the beginning that hasn’t happened yet.”

And wherever we went, we went together.