October 27th, 2012 – July 27th 2014: Beginning of the 22nd month.
December 19th, 2010 – October 27th, 2012: 22 months old.
The length of time Rees was in our lives is now the length of time he was removed ripped from it. I never really realized just how short a span of time 22 months was until I lived it in the wake of his loss. 22 months since I last heard his laugh. 22 months since he woke we up with his smile. 22 months since he last grabbed my hand. 22 months since I last heard him speak. 22 months since he was last in my physical world. 22 months since I was whole…
22 months represents his entire life. Beginning to end. Everything he was, everything I know about him – I feel about him, is derived from a lifetime that spanned 2 months shy of 2 years. Most of the things I own, I have owned for much longer than 22 months… and there is not one of those things, including my own life, that I would not trade to have him here today. I’ve written before about how time is such a cruel mistress. The longer I live, the more time seems to take from me. I guess this is the part of growing older that I never contemplated when was I younger. Time is a huntress that starts tracking you and everything you love, from birth. From the moment you enter world a new huntress is born that begins its mission to erase everything you are, and everything you will be. As we age the huntress hones her skill until she is finally ready to make the final strike. Sure, some of us are able to dodge the huntress at length, but no matter how wily we are, time will always strike true.
Time does this for everyone, and everything that has ever, or will ever, exist. The paradox of human life is the fact that we are completely aware of time stalking us, yet we are totally powerless to stop it. No other creature on this planet understands its own futility against time more than we do. The cruelty of time is the fact that in our youth we feel we have so much of it, we don’t consider the future – while in our twilight we see the long road behind us with the inevitable terminus ahead but spend too much of what remains lamenting the detours we took when there was more road ahead. We spend so much time worrying about time, that we forget that there is one place in which time has no meaning: the present.
“The clock is running. Make the most of today. Time waits for no man. Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why it is called the present.”
― Alice Morse Earle
In those 22 months of Rees’ life I am not sure if there many times that I stopped to think, in the present, of just how lucky I was. I know there were times – there had to be, but I don’t recall anything in particular. I took so much for granted in those 22 months because, in my mind, there was so much more time to be had with Rees. I had everything planned out. We would play with transformers together. Pretend to be superheroes together. Dig a ditch together. Make fire. Look up at the stars. Talk about girls. Play videogames. Watch the Mets disappoint us on a yearly basis…etc. I had his future all planned out. It was going to be amazing. It was going to be fun. It was going to be the best. It was never going to be.
I did not know on October 26th, 2012 that would be my last time saying “goodnight, little man”. I didn’t think time was going to track my little boy down. At 22 months time doesn’t have any teeth – it shouldn’t be able to do what it did. The future I thought I had on the 26th was destroyed the very next day. From the moment of his death, until the moment of mine, time will now do nothing but remind me of what I had. It is almost as if time now taunts me as she moves closer to taking her final lunge… Continue reading