El tiempo y la vida

Where did the time go?
Where did the time between my last blog posting and this one?
It does not "feel" like more than a month. The time was full,
full of holidays, friends, family, snow. And yet, even knowing
what filled these weeks, I still ask:
Where does the time go?

We are the space time travels into.
Where are we going?

These questions are on my mind with a greater presence than usual today. On January 2, we celebrated our aunt's birthday. On January 8, she left us. Now we return to her home town to celebrate her life from beginning to end, all 90 years of it. Years that were vibrant, creative, meaningful; years in which she cared for, loved, and taught others. She was an adventurous English teacher, as much at home with Ebonics as Shakespeare. She was an inveterate encourager. Many of her students stayed in touch with her throughout their adult lives. She was one of "those" people: those whom you meet, even just once, and cannot forget; and as beautiful as she was original, her blue eyes lit with a fire from within.

Don't be smug. Are you thinking: "90 years, what a good, long life! Do not sorrow." But a good long life does not make us miss someone any less. In some ways, it makes us miss them more. They were part of us longer, woven into the fabric of our lives longer, more deeply rooted into our own Life / Time.

It is the juxtaposition of events that is teaching me at this hour.
Here now. Here not. It takes so little time to come into this world--
and so little time to leave it. Where does the time go?

It travels into us, and then . . .
We are responsible for it and to it,
this Time.

Text and image, copyright Ysabel de la Rosa.