Time To Go

Leave it to a garage sale's cleaning to find a blog post idea

Time is like one of those double edged swords.  On one hand, it's the doctor with the only cure.  It smooths over what we mess up, and it eases the ache of whatever wound has been inflicted.  On the other hand, it changes people.  It twists and skews our views and makes the greatest days of your life become distant and blurred memories.  Time picks no favorites, and no one is immune.

A friend of mine from high school ran away to another state with her boyfriend this past week.  Had you known her a few years back, you never would have guessed that this would happen.  Without warning, after she came home from college, she packed up one night while her mom was getting her hair done, and when she got home, my friend had all of her belongings in boxes, with her boyfriend waiting with a U-Haul across the street.  We still don't know where my friend went.  All I know is she's gone.

Hold that thought.

I visited my grandfather in the nursing home today.  Reader, there's a teensy bit of history you should know before I keep typing:  my grandfather has had nearly nothing to do with me for the vast majority of my life.  It doesn't bother me anymore, and I no longer resent him for it.  If there's one thing I've learned in my short life it's that we are not victims of circumstances, and to act as though we are makes us victims of ourselves.  Last summer, after he suffered an aneurysm and a stroke, he was placed in a nursing home, where I finally realized that it was my choice whether to be a part of his life or not.  Refusal was not an option.    I saw him more last summer than ever before in my life, and I can say without a doubt that it was one of the best parts of the season.  When I left for college, however, despite promises to visit whenever I got the chance, seeing my grandfather fell lower and lower on my list of priorities.  Luckily for me, he seemed to be pretty forgiving of my absence when I walked in his room today.

When I did see him as a child, he was always a fairly stern man, and the stories my dad has told me did him no favors in the likability department.  Regardless, when I walked in his room today, he was asleep.  After he stirred, I asked if he minded if I visited with him for a few minutes, and almost immediately, he brightened up and nodded.  Within a quarter of an hour, he was crying.  Don't think that I made him cry, Reader, because I can readily assure you that the only thing I did was ask him a question about his life.  Whatever the question was, it made him remember something, and some memory caused him to be so overcome with emotions that he cried.  It was such a change from the hard man I met so many years ago, and what surprised me even more was that it broke my heart to see him so hurt.  Not too long ago, I would have paid to see him suffer (I do not say that with pride, but honesty).  Now, I wanted nothing more than to make him smile.

Here we were--two people who had changed due to nothing more than time and the circumstances brought with it--each with scars of years past and pictures to say it happened.  Time allowed my grandfather to be put in a nursing home, and time allowed my friend to run off to some unknown place.

We can't escape the ticking seconds which engulf us.  Time changes us.  Time changes our world.  Time changes our perspectives, our ideas, our goals, our aspirations, our passions.  It does not dictate what these changes may ensue.  That part is up to us.
Reader, will you let the changes be for the good?  Will you allow the changes to make a difference?  We can't always control what happens to us, and that's all right.  We're not supposed to.  We can control how we react to our circumstances, and what comes of them.