Time

Time is the most precious thing. Irreplaceable. We walk in a line of time, whether we feel moments of liberation or not. We all walk a life span, not predetermined to the minute but most definitely finite to the second. Those who leave us along the way offer us reminders, lessons about the process of mortality. We attend to the message or turn away. Those of us who have chosen to be students of life learn a great deal from the deaths we encounter on our paths. Others choose to immerse themselves in the details of funerals and estates, while holding onto their denial of their mortality. They secretly feel they will beat the system.

My practice has benefited greatly from touching the dying and letting in their lessons. I was a young man of infatuation with superficial passions and my own suffering. Wasting my time on foolishness was so easy, so comforting at times. But, as I nursed the terminally ill, I began to pay attention. Holding the hand of a dying 35-year-old patient, a hard-working plumber, when I was twenty-three, as he clearly verbalized his experience before expiring, changed my life. I still think of him often and hear his voice in my memory.

My own mother passed away about two hours ago. I am incorporating the lesson of her death as I write this essay. She was the source of my life. Now she is an exemplar of my death to come. What I do from this moment on will be enriched by my experience of her death, as much as by the experience of her long life. This is the wheel of birth and death. Remembering the brevity of life as part of my daily practice will hopefully encourage me to apply the lessons of those who have gone before me in all my remaining moments.