Samantha Montgomerie
We like to think of time as linear. Seconds building on seconds, forming the minutes, hours and days that track the path of our lives. Dementia and death fracture this line.
Time jumps.
My terminally ill father slipped into dementia in his final months. He suffered a recurring delusion that he could travel back in time.
“A jumper.”
His wide eyes would shine with his conviction. He would arrive at some train station back in time – naked, cold, and anxious about finding his way home. He would struggle through the night, trying to track back, wandering the corridors to find the right path home. We felt helpless in our inability to calm him. At times it was easier to bring the jersey he asked for, to warm him as he faced snow flurries in 1930s France.
“You have a lot left in you,” said the bartender as I left. “I can tell.”
I’m from Christchurch. On my 
Miscarriage can be a difficult experience. It feels delicate for me still, although it has been several years since my last miscarriage. There is a silence that accompanies this kind of loss, a lack of conversation, a lack of acknowledgement, a problem of knowing how to say how it is, and to whom. Dolphins and whales tell their grief through action and their way of speaking has provided me – after a long time – with a way to find some human language to express my own ‘long swim’.