More Than I Could Swallow
There’s something about time that you realize when you get older: it tends to go faster. Of course, it really doesn’t go faster. A minute is still a minute, an hour is still an hour. It still takes exactly one second to say “Mississippi” or three if you spell it out loud. So what is it about time, then?
You remember when you were a kid it would take forever for things to happen. School would last for days before the 3:20 bell rang and all the little kids ran screaming from the classrooms, rejoicing in their fleeting freedom. And you also remember it would take at least two years for Christmas to come and it would take another year and a half for your birthday to finally arrive.
At some point, though, you just stop waiting. You don’t have to anymore; things just happen. Things you used to anticipate for weeks on end start coming at you like bricks hurled off the side of a tall building until you find yourself practically blindsided with a whole truckload of dates and events and occasions you never saw coming. Before you’re done with one thing, another one comes. There’s no waiting. And before you know it, the same things keep happening again. And then comes something completely different.
Finally it gets to the point where you’re waiting again, only you’re waiting for the days when nothing happens. The days where you can sit back and hopefully watch as things slow down so you can finally enjoy them for all they might be worth. But those days tend to come late, and they don’t come often. And when they do come, it is not uncommon that they’re soon forgotten, clouded up with more things that just keep happening. Grandsons, granddaughters, nieces and nephews and weddings and funerals and showers and parties.” Always something, never nothing.
Eventually the days come were you simply can’t handle it anymore. You lie down, and let it all pass by. Things are still going on all around you, but you’ve finally given up on them. Not long after, you start to drift off and you begin to wonder if all that waiting you did in the first place was really worth it. 80 years of waiting for the things you could enjoy. But did you ever stop to actually do that?
Were you ever really happy?
That’s when you decide, happy or not, that it’s all over anyway. You’re done. But time still moves on. In your place is another, newer life, waiting patiently, just as you did, for all the things he wants very much to happen. All you can do then is hope that he’ll be happy when it all starts to fly at him.
But still…
Is it worth it?