2021.06.13 Time Passes—And Passes

The passage of time is neutral. How it may feel, what it can mean, and what one does with one’s time is what matters.

On the Strength of All Conviction and the Stamina of Love
by Jennifer Michael Hecht

Sometimes I think
we could have gone on.
All of us. Trying. Forever.

But they didn’t fill
the desert with pyramids.
They just built some. Some.

They’re not still out there,
building them now. Everyone,
everywhere, gets up, and goes home.

Yet we must not
diabolize time. Right?
We must not curse the passage of time.


Jennifer Michael Hecht, “On the Strength of All Conviction and the Stamina of Love” from The Next Ancient World. Copyright © 2001 by Jennifer Michael. From The Writers’Almanac, 6/6/21.


The title of this poem alone is enough to make me reflect once more on the holiness of trying. Jesus of Nazareth was idealized at birth, then as he grew was accused of being possessed, crazy, heretical, criminal, and last but not least, suicidally critical of all religious and political authority of his times. For this he was worshiped and executed—all within a short 30 years. He made the most of his time.

In July,1998, I was driving too fast along the Massachusetts Turnpike, racing down to Connecticut, my eyes wet with tears as I munched on a hastily prepared, soggy tunafish sandwich. I’d received a call from the nursing home where my mom had lived for the last four years. The nurse apologized for the first call in which she had informed me that, although Mom was fading toward death, there was no rush. Now there was a rush. She was nearing death as I drove. Would I make it? Please God, let me make it?

My sister was on vacation and not coming home. I’d asked my oldest daughter who lived close by to go to her grandmother’s bedside. She told me later that Gahmy, as she called my mother, had ordered a peanut butter sandwich for her “last meal.” The nurse wondered if that was such a good idea, and Mom replied, “Can you think of a better one?” She then told my daughter that she saw an angel and said of her dying: “This won’t take long, darling.”

But I was speeding. Why? One more goodbye? To say what exactly? I wasn’t sure but, as I checked traffic in my rear-view mirror before I moved into the passing lane to increase my speed, I saw a clear lane. I also say my mother’s face. The image was clear, its message even clearer: “She tried.” I knew suddenly, after a lifetime of struggle with my mom’s zeal over me which I experienced as overbearing “sMOTHERation”, that she had tried. She tried to make everything nice and good for me and my family. Yes, it felt controlling to me, and yes it was her way of trying, the only way she knew. She had tried.

She was dead when I arrived at her bedside, but not by much. My daughter and a chaplain friend were there. What exactly does one do in such moments? You follow your own instincts—not Hollywood’s. I sat beside her and looked at her pale face. Her mouth was agape but not yet stiff, so I closed it, noting that on her lips there was a crooked line of fresh lipstick she’d painted on—by body memory. It was exactly how she would want to look to meet her “Maker”—possibly her own beloved father who had died and left her heartbroken at the tender age of twelve.  

Silently I prayed, Oh God, if you do this sort of thing somewhere in the universe of all our projected heavens, tell my mother our whole story and wipe away her tears—and mine. Oh, and tell her I’m trying, too.   
        
            *  *  *  *

Time passed, and in time, many who knew Jesus well recognized Divinity in his gospel and in his behavior. They wrote it all down, and now, centuries later, many still compete over the correct definitions for goodness/Godness in the world.  And just as many, and more, keep trying, for that is the way of it.

Simply so.