The Time is Out of Joint

It's one of those rare moments--the sun is out after days of rain, my mother and father went off on a scenic drive through the countryside, and I have the house to myself so I can play my music loud, have chocolate for breakfast, and read lines of dialog from my novel-in-progress to  hear how they actually sound and edit for flow. If I keep busy, I can almost pretend that things are normal. I can almost be 18 again--and my mother's illness is still an unawakened, unimaginable future. But I'm not 18. In a few weeks I'll be 28, and last night, for a short time, my mother lost feeling in her left arm for no reason--another random symptom of the inoperable cancer growing in her spine and brain.

 I debate whether I should call and tell my brother, who can't be here because of job commitments. But is the arm incident worth mentioning or is it just a fluke? Does my brother need to know or will it worry him unnecessarily? Mom didn't bother to tell him, but she doesn't tell him much outside of the really big things, like hospital and doctor visits.  He gets his information from me most of the time. It's an impossible decision and it's in the back of my mind always; even as I pretend for a moment--even as I slip back into an earlier time and place.

Time doesn’t move in a straight line--not always. There are loops and curls and broad circular motions. Even the space between heart beats is not as consistent as we think.  It stretches out long and scrunches up short. It is not the calm river in the plains of metaphor, but more of a white water rapid ride through twisting, bowing canyons. Most of us are well accustomed to navigating that roiling river. We have phrases like "time flies" or "the days crawled by". We casually notice déjà vu, and don't blink an eye when the well known name of a friend of years or decades slips our tongue for a moment. We pause when something reminds us of yester-yore, and yet, we stay mostly in the moment.

 But cancer has taken my mother's sense of time and disoriented her within that flow. Today is yesterday and it's all happening after tomorrow. Half an hour is long, three days is short. Her childhood runs parallel to mine and she speaks in memories. I follow suit because I have never been good with time and because when it is just the two of us, linear moments fall away and the clock and calendar become suggestions. A week, a month, a day--it is all the same and it doesn't matter.

 Last night when her arm went suddenly numb the thought that she might be having another seizure, maybe even "the big one" forecasted by her doctors, crossed my mind for an instant. I cried out in my heart and said "No, not now. Please, this isn't a good time to take her!" The names replied "Will that time ever come? Will there ever be a 'good' time?"  I can't argue. There is no "good" time for death. There is only before and after. As we mark our lives by deaths and births and tragedies and triumphs. As we orient ourselves in our histories not by digital numbers on an alarm clock display but by events sewn into our being--it was "before we moved into the bigger house", or it was "after grandpa passed away"--as we mark our lives by one another, time is an intimate and personal thing.  There is never a good time for anything bad, nor a bad time for anything good. There simply is a time.

 Six years ago I asked Shai to rebook my mother's trip to the west and he did. I thought I would be able to handle this better with the benefit of age, as if I thought there was something which would happen over the years to lessen the pain of loss. There isn't. But even if there was, I see now that it would not be any different. Time is not a straight line. "Mommy, don't die" makes all of us five again. There is never a good time. Only a right one, a destined one. And when it comes there will be tears and heartache. And then life will go on…because it must.

That's something else the Names told me once.