Time

 Time, I can remember a time when I refused to wear a watch, when I thought I had all the time in the world.  That was in the spring of my youth.  Now I am in the winter of my life and the way I think about time is different.

In the daily pounding of my grief, everyone keeps telling me time will make it better, time will heal. There was a time I believed that but not anymore.  I think the business of daily living helps you to focus on something other than your grief, but the pain of a heart ripped opened is just as intense today as it was four months ago.  I think that pain will be just as intense if I am alive four years from now.

My dad's parents lived a life that payed very little attention to time as we know it.  They went to bed when the sun went down, got up when it's first rays brightened their world.  They worked and sweated seven days a week.  Sundays gave them some respite but not always.  They were two of the happiest kindest people I have ever known. 

I wake up every morning and see the leaves of honey gold, burnt brown and sunset red swirling by my windows.  It doesn't really matter what day it is anymore, the dogs and the chickens don't care.  They do understand that daylight is shorter, the temps are cooler and the one who feeds feeds them cries.

I make lists in my day planner to remind me that life continues, bills to be paid, feed to be bought and calls to people I love.   Rick bought me that planner twenty five years ago for my birthday and for the second part of the present sent me to a "What Matters Most"  time management seminar.  I always told him it was the best gift he ever bought me.  In some ways it still is, but time and its "management" has changed definition.

Time for me now, the opportunity to let those in my life know how much they mean to me, to try to regain my creative energies and to let go of all that is no longer important.

Today I wish for the time that is left for any of us, that we spend it wisely.  Once it is spent, you never get it back.  So please don't wast it on hate and anger and bitterness.