We Don't Have Enough Time

 This is a personal story and some reflections I had about these events.

Your best friend calls you. You two haven't talked in two weeks, catching up has become less and less frequent. You normally place the blame on the fact you're both twenty-something.
You pick up the phone and greet her with the usual:

- Hey Trixie! - made up name for privacy's sake - How are you?

- Horrible. 

Usually this kind of dry and negative answer is paired with sarcasm or a pinch of hyperbole. But not this time. Over the last two weeks a lot happened, too much happened. Her cat died. As she is talking to you she is on the way to her grandfather's funeral. And her mother, the mother of your best friend, was diagnosed with cancer a few days prior.

She does not know what to do, and you don't know what to say. And in the dreadful silence that takes place after hearing these news, all you can think is:

How much time do we really have?

I have been on a hiatus since July, both creatively and socially. Since then I have gone back to therapy, and what began as a journey full of sadness and self isolation has now become a depression diagnosis and a battle against time to find who am I and what time do we have.

After the phone call I couldn't help but remember of a week in 2012, when a friend invited me to his uncle's country house. I was pretty nervous in the beginning but the following three days were some of the best of my life. But one thing I remember very clearly was his uncle, who was always drunk, but he is the kind of guy who gets funny when he drinks, and in one afternoon while he was watering his plants he looked at me and said:

- You... You look like a cowboy! - He sprays me with his garden hose - I'm gonna call you... Bill!

Ever since then my friend his whole family calls me Bill, I find it funny how such a random event became part of our little culture.

In 2023 this uncle said he was feeling too weak to take care of the garden in his country house. Not too long after he discovered he has stage 4 cancer. Now, he decided to enjoy whatever time he has left by doing what he loves with the people he loves by his side. The man who is such an integral part of such a fun memory of mine is fading.

 
And I don't know what to do.

 

She whispers.

However, that phone call was a wake up call, and it finally made me understand: For a moment in the beginning of this year (2023), there was the very real possibility that my father could die. He had a aneurysm that doctors could only describe as a "ticking time bomb".

Our whole family was immensely worried, people who hadn't called in ages reached out, prayed for us, and offered help afraid that the worse could happen.

Luckily, after two weeks and a twelve hour surgery, he was free. But, to me, it took more time than that to process what happened. We worried he could have died during the surgery, we worried he could have died during the two weeks of waiting, but never worried about any of that before discovering he had a problem.

I didn't know what to do, until it hit me:

One thing is knowing you're going to die.

But KNOWING you're going to die is a very different story.

Death is not obvious in our day to day lives. It doesn't hunt us down in the form a wolf, nor is it a grim reaper. Death whispers. And as gracefuly as things are created they are taken away, but we are too proud to accept that. We are too arrogant, thinking we always have one more day to live and too little time to reach out to a friend.

So call your loved ones.

Life goes by so quickly, and who knows how much more time do we have? If only I could protect the people I love in the realm of my dreams. But I can't, it's not up to me.

So care for those you have near you. Not in fear of death, but as a celebration of life.

And in a prayer that we both will have one more day... I finish by hoping to...

See ya in the near future!