Again, it's been months since a posting but this morning this called to me.
I’ve been living with my father off and on for almost five years now and he continues to be one of my greatest teachers.
Yesterday a member of the Rush Presbyterian Alzheimers study came to visit dad. He became part of the study when my mother was ill and he was trying to get her any medication that might slow or stop her dementia. That was more than 15 years ago. Now he is one of the oldest living members of the study and they come once a year to check on him. One of the questions he was asked was, “what year is it?” That simple question reminded me of the differences between what is important to us and what is important to him. Time is fluid for him. He moves back and forth between this moment and all the past moments. Each is real for him. Why would the number of this year be important? It no longer matters to him what year it is. He is alive in this moment. He marks time by what he sees. Each morning he wakes up and looks outside. What he sees gives him a sense of when it is.
“Looks like there’s snow on the ground. It must be cold out there”
For him, that is all he needs to know about time.
That simple question that Rush Pres asked had me wondering about how rooted we may be or at the very least how I may be rooted in time. Our sense of time and its measurement seems to give us a fixed point from which to move forward and backward. It gives a sense of stability and a framework for our lives. How would we react if that sense of time was stripped away? Imagine for a moment being totally fixed in the moment without the rooting of the year. I looked outside in the dark of the morning with the outline of the trees just becoming evident and tried to step out of my sense of time. For me there was a momentary feeling of disorientation, of quicksand under my feet, of a shifting that left me feeling slightly nauseous. Then, it momentarily smoothed out and there was a lifting and a sense of release. Then it all slipped away and the year was present again.
To me, there is something very important to learn from my father about this sense of time. There is something about the ease in which he moves through it...about his living in the moment that seems to be worth learning. Maybe it is simply his detachment from its importance that is the learning. Perhaps it is the letting go of the rooted feeling of time that is important. The learning beckons me.
