Live Well

 “You can go in now” It felt as though the words had come from inside me, like a thought instead of a sound. Time has a nearly infinite elasticity when you are waiting for something as rare as your last moments with someone you love and time for me had stretched to the point my consciousness had slipped through. Then the nurse stepped into my peripheral vision as I sat on the floor in the hallway. Her face was filled with compassion and graced with a gentle smile. She held her hand out towards the open door as if to welcome me. I could go in now. So I gathered my self together.

My Dad seemed to be asleep. I quietly took my place beside him and watched the machines do their work. And I watched the clock. Time on this side of the wall was much different. There is nothing as horrifying as having one irreplaceable second after another stripped away from you as the thin red hand on a clock circles. Not when your are just old enough to know what death is and not old enough help anyone do it. “Why are you in such a hurry?” my father asked. With this simple question juxtaposed with the horror I felt in our time's passage I was instantly transported back to another night.

My Dad had just gotten home from another emergency trip to the hospital. He cornered me in my bedroom and accused me of hearing his cries of pain and ignoring them. He said I wanted him dead. He was wrong. I wanted him to be well again. I wanted to play chess again. I wanted to go shooting again. I wanted to go fishing. I wanted to hear him read Shakespeare out loud. I wanted to talk about science. I wanted to have the peace, and safety, and completeness of having my Dad by my side. There was so much I wanted to say but all I could offer him in this moment was silence, and innocence. Eventually he left me alone in my room with all of that to want and no one to hold. But, I was four years older and had gained enough experience to meet what I felt was a harsh accusation with the simple truth. “I'm only supposed to be in here twenty minutes at a time.” Just then the same nurse came in the room with a fresh blanket saying “Take all the time you need.” And with those simple and profound words the spell was broken, my horror faded and my Dad and I passed a couple of hours talking easily to one another until he was too tired to go on and I left him to sleep.

His question and my reaction to it has clung to my life for the three decades since his death. It devoured me slowly and nearly completely. After my Mother's death the loss of her part of my Father's story made the memories of all the bad times more poignant and predominant. Her narrative had sweetness and memories of light my Dad had inside him. Without that point of view to help guide me I sank into the evil of the wretched, premature end of someone I love and need. Loss had become part of how I viewed my world to the point there was no taste, no scent, no sound of anything I once held dear. There was only longing and anger. Grief was like a filter on a camera lens, unnoticeable except for the resulting image; skewed reality. Finally, during a reliving of my experience in the hospital I realized what was happening, that this pain was literally killing me and with the help of people I love I found a way out of the spiral.

This week I have come to say farewell the third man I have loved the way you should love a Father, Dr. Ulysses Gonzalez. He was a great man that lead a long life and died surrounded by Family. I will miss him very much, many people will, and his death should not be mourned but life without him will be. My role in the ceremonies is singular, to be here when my Wife needs me. The quiet within this simple duty has offered me a precious moment of clarity. My Dad was really hoping to hear that I had friends waiting for me. He wanted to hear that I had something important to do or something fun. That I had to go to work to help support the Family. He wanted to hear that the things were in place that would give my life meaning and joy. He wanted to hear that he had accomplished something very important by creating a whole person strong enough to carry on with out him. In this moment I miss him more than ever, and more than ever at peace with his absence.

I see now that having a great number of days in my life may not offer me a chance to pass from this life with all conflicts resolved and a loving legacy. The quantity of my days is not what I can control, my only chance is what I do with the time I have left. If I want to die well I must live well. I must work joyfully to create the world I want and accept the world that exists. I must guard the health of my body, and my mind, and my soul. I want to teach Ella how to play chess. I want be a friend to as many people as I can. I must paint. I want to laugh, a lot. I want to hear every word my Wife and Daughter have to say and take them to heart and make them part of me. I must learn to offer all my thoughts as expression of joy. Most of all I must learn to face my fear without anger as a shield, because when death comes I want to go smiling.  

Visions of Time

 I believe that every moment is eternal. Time does not pass. Consciousnesses persists as we flow from one existence to the next in a nearly infinite progression. We experience this as change as we move through space and we call that Time.  Everything that has ever existed still exists and everything that can exist has always existed. I am bound to a past and a future, not by memory or potential but by matter and space. I believe the linear Arrow of Time is a creation of Biology, not Physics and each individual Life's Narrative is a creation, like our vision, stitched together and inverted internally in our minds to help create a consistent model of the world around us. I believe that Time is how we are made capable of knowing ourselves and the other incarnations of consciousness swirling through the Universe together. I have struggled for two decades to be able to distill my thoughts about Time into this single paragraph and the effort has come with some cost. To believe fervently in your own experience and intuition, and to come to a conclusion diametrically opposed to what is accepted as humanity's experience of reality can be very disturbing.

My estimation of my sanity got a needed boost while I was watching an episode of “Through the Worm Hole” about time and I was introduced to a physicist that believes many of things I do but he has done the math that helps prove them. Julian Barbour is, among other things, the Author of “The End of Time” He describes existence as a series of “Nows” each a separate Universe in itself. I do not expect Mr. Barbour to become a house hold name anytime soon. His ideas have not been readily accepted by everyone in the theoretical physics community. But he has given a great gift; the ability to more freely accept and explore the consequence and artifacts of my perception.

***

The sensation of time is difficult to control. However, there are times in most of our lives when the sensation can become so muted the time seems to hover, warp and nearly stop. These events are usually the great transitions of our lives: marriages, deaths, births, ceremonies marking rites of passage. During these moments you are present in its true meaning. The event is an essential component of your existence, of your passing through place. You have nothing else to do but take part by adding your action and witness. You have no doubts, no discordant voices to pull you consciousness in another direction. These moments mark an epiphany, your manifestation in this plane.

It was the first Summer of our lives together for Rowena and I. She was sleeping beside me on a hot Summer afternoon. A gentle rain was falling, even as sun streamed into the room through 3 small gaps in the curtains. I watched a small thread of dust twist slowly in the beam. As a laid transfixed by it's motion the sound of Rowena's breathing and the sound of rain joined and hushed to silence and then the thread hung in the ether, motionless. At this moment I could feel the past. It was not a memory, I could feel my body stretch into it, connected to everyone I had touched and loved as if I was still beside them, holding them. I knew I had come to the place I was supposed to be, when I was meant to be there. The woman beside me was the person I was to spend eternity with and eternity was there with us. And then the future crashed upon me, the sparkling river of a young girls laughter from the other side of the window. I knew what I heard was the voice of someone waiting for me to join her life. Then the thread began to spin out of the sunbeam. Rowena turned and with her head on my shoulder, still asleep, joined in the laughter from deep within her dream. It was from that moment on, I was aware of my destiny, and I was glad for it.

***

Now that I believe in my forever, to whatever extent I can create my world, I try to craft it gently. I try, as best I can, to create moments that are worthy of living in, present with the those I love. I want to feel Peace. I want Rowena and Ella to know me and I want to know them. I want us to share laughter, to hear it Echo across all of our experiences. I want our silence to be the deep, abiding silence of comfort. I want to hold them as if the thought of time itself can pass away and turn to dust. It is often difficult not to be bitter and jealous of all the Nows I spend in their absence until I realize, that pain is eternal also. To create pain, and worse yet, to share that needlessly with others is a sin that crosses ages. Instead I try to feel the act of being flow through me, to feel space itself connect us. I put my trust in the infinite futures before us. I know the perfect Loving moment is the Heaven of all our longings, and where we dwell forever.