Clock With No Hands

Taken from M Train, by Patti Smith,  P. 83. 2015.

"I closed my notebook and sat in there café thinking about real time. Is it time uninterrupted? Only the present comprehended? Are our thoughts nothing but passing trains, no stops, devoid of dimensions, whizzing by massive posters with repeating images?  Catching a fragment from a window seat, yet another fragment from the next identical frame? If I write in the present yet digress, is that still real time? Real time, I reasoned, cannot be divided into sections like numbers on the face of a clock. If I write about the past as I simultaneously dwell in the present, am I still in real time? Perhaps there is no past or future, only the perpetual present that contains this trinity of memory. I looked out into the street and noticed the light changing. Perhaps the sun had slipped behind a cloud. Perhaps time had slipped away.

Invisible Wounds

Invisible wounds are the hardest to heal for their closure depends on the love of others. And patience, and understanding and the tender gift of time.

From Call the Midwife, Season 3, Episode 8

Grief

Time will help heal but never erase the beauty and the sadness that is life. 

Symmetry—A Palindromic Film

Symmetry—A Palindromic Film

This post is based on a post by my friend Jan.
To visit Jan's post Click Here: Opens in a new window. 

Why is the past different from the future.
Because the laws of physics are time specific.
If clocks were to go backward instead of forward...

Palindrome.
palindrome |ˈpalinˌdrōm| nouna word, phrase, or sequence that readsthe same backward as forward, e.g., madamor nurses run.

Not nice to remind a person.
I think, at least today
I think,

I would like to have time reverse
Reverse for me.
For us.

Tears. Unexpected. But not your fault.
Unexpectedly, tears hide and hide and seek.
Gregory's Grandfather on his mother's side: Otto.

A Letter to a Friend

Hi Susan. I am doing well. Still numb and very sad but at this point Gregory is being well taken care of. He is no longer the man you knew just a short while ago. I am grateful for his current home, one of the best Memory Care Facilities in Chicago, and am grateful to begin learning a new role as Secondary Care Giver. I do not have to go it alone but have a team of nurses, social workers, dietitians, doctors, therapists, etc to help Gregory as his needs continue to change.

Eventually I'll get on with my life. I never martyred myself to Gregory's disease and continued to have an identity of my own but did devote a lot of time, and energy, and love on an increasing basis as Gregory's needs increased. My identity, however, did include having a life partner with which to share my days. With him in his new home and me in the old one, I have to figure out who I am as a single person and what the angle of my days will look like.

Now, while I see him a couple of hours every day, I have lots of time on my hands and not yet the motivation to do anything with that time. I think the first thing I'll involve myself in is tailoring the condo to my needs and removing those things that met Gregory's needs. I will continue my writing and begin again to pursue a publisher for my memoirs which were organized at Ragdale during my residency in 2010. I hope to begin traveling again.

What I do not seem to have, and being good to myself since it has only been two weeks since this major upheaval, is any idea of what the future will hold. No goals. No ambitions. No hopes and desires. Except that Gregory be well taken care of and that I continue to be healthy and alive.

In some way, it is as though this moment has always been arriving and always leaving at the same instant yet doesn't exist in reality. Gregory is very visibly living in the moment, no past and no future and not really much of a present as we know it, and perhaps for now, I am living in the moment as well.

Love you, miss you, keep your guest room ready as one day I will arrive at your doorstep (with notice :-)

Fondly,
Michael

Time To Review

Each night, when Gregory and I are tucked into bed and the lights are turned out, we hold hands.

I review the events of the day, beginning with "It was a good day." (Even if it wasn't.) I briefly name each significant event: for example: "We shopped for groceries. For dinner we had pizza. The Call The Midwives episode was wonderful."

Next I review the events for tomorrow, again very briefly. For example: "Tomorrow we have a slow morning, then we go to the opera at night."

To the day's event review, Gregory usually responds with: "Yes it was good." or "It was great." or just "Uhuhh."

To the tomorrow's event review, Gregory usually responds with something like: "Oh goodie." or "Nice!" or "Mmmm."

Over time I had to learn not to discuss the entire week, or anticipate out loud something that was happening in two or three days. Too much information was not only not remembered but it confused time even more than it was already confused. He would ask, for example: "Is the movie today?" When it was on the weekend. or "When will they visit?" When people were  going out to dinner with us mid-week. What he doesn't know doesn't hurt!

Works pretty well. Not sure how much he understands or remembers but it does give us something to talk about when we go to bed besides the always wonderful:

M: Good Night, I love you.
G: Me too!
M: Me three:-)