Time is .... too short.

My mother, LaVone Strube, in late 1916.

In response to Facebook birthday greetings on the occasion of my 67th freaking birthday,  I posted something like "another year down the drain" in addition to acknowledging that I had an outstanding year. Well wishers shot back au contraire comments such as:

• Down the Drain?? I prefer to look at it as "Another EPIC year filled with amazing times with family and friends, music and art, great food and wine, in the most beautiful part of the world.
• Not down the drain; in the treasure chest of memories!
• We only have now. Live, love, and grow.

I can't argue with any of these sentiments. It WAS an epic year. I DO have a treasure chest of memories. I AM acutely aware that we only have NOW and not to waste a moment—to live, love, and grow.

But I'm not retracting the "down the drain" comment. Where does time go? Well, it doesn't go anywhere. The present just IS, and the past just ISN'T. It hurts my head and my heart to think about Time—with a capital T, which is something I've been doing since I turned 17 and saw my sweet 16th year vanish like the stupid tears I cried over my lost youth.

I continue to work through this issue, which is to be present in every moment, to enjoy the gift of life. I can't believe I've waded into this subject and keep getting dragged further into my own doubts, fears, internal conflicts, and cosmic questions. It's pathetic, really, to continue to grapple with the mystery of time. What's the point? The truth is I can't help myself.

Here's what I know. When I'm living in the present, time doesn't exist. I think that's true for most people. When I'm writing, gardening, dancing, doing yoga, and am engaged in life, the hours evaporate. Where have those seconds, minutes, hours, days, years, centuries gone? I get the sense that they converge into a whirlpool that circles somewhere in the universe and evaporate without ceremony. One thing I believe is true: the universe is cold and uncaring about us poor little people clinging to our moments.

My parents, Floyd and LaVone Strube, when they were young and beautiful newlyweds in 1936. He died at age 93. 

This morning I was with my mother, LaVone, who was 96 on January 1st. I followed her with a wheelchair as she used her walker to navigate the hallways at her assisted living home. She can shuffle along for 50 steps or so before she has to rest in her chair. Then we talk as she gathers strength for the next 50 steps. She shook her head and said with a wry smile, "I am still your perky mother, but I can't  believe I'm so old. I can't believe I'm in a wheelchair." She pointed to her ears, which have failed her, and her eyes, which are going fast. "I never thought I'd be like this," she tells me.

But she doesn't complain. LaVone and I don't discuss time in any way other than personal linear measurements. Her life, my life, the lives of our loved ones. We're born, move forward in time, then we die. In the scope of the universe, and with all those colliding protons driving physicists to distraction, our individual lives mean little or nothing .
As we grow older, we realize, gut level, that life won't last forever, but we cling to it anyway, grasping at seconds.


My toddler grandson has no concept of Time, and is the perfect model for Be Here Now. The Moment is all he knows, and all he needs to know. Too bad he'll forget it before he rediscovers, like my mother, that the present is all we have.  

LaVone and great-grandson Noah in late 2011. She's almost 96. He'll be two in June. 

I did a little research into time. Turns out that, surprise!, it's been a hot topic  throughout the ages, debated and dissected by religious practitioners, philosophers, scientists, and everyday people. Basically, it boils down to the linear view or the circular view. Christians, Jews, and Muslims tend toward the linear. (Can you believe we all seem to agree on something!?) Time has a beginning and an end. Eastern religions tend toward the circular. Time repeats.


Whatever. I'll go with the It's a Beautiful Day lyrics to their great song, Time Is, which starts like this:

Time is too slow for those who wait
And time is too swift for those who fear
Time is too long for those who grieve
And time is too short for those that laugh.

I have so many memories about that song. But the dominant one is the last: My father died in November 2006, and in March 2007, I took my mother on a Princess cruise, a first for us both. I loved being on a ship that was plunging through deep troughs. One sunny but windy afternoon I plugged into my iPod and walked/trotted around the deck. Time Is came on and I began to run and leap with ocean spray in my face and the ship bucking and diving. Time is too short for those that laugh.
Keep on laughing, and don't think too much about those fleeting but precious moments between when you exist and when you don't.