Reflections and Nightmares- Irene A Waters (writer and memoirist)

A week ago Roger had his bloods taken for the test that will tell us if he is moving out of remission. For a week he has been on tenterhooks – not made any easier by the haematologist, who had been doing phone consultations since COVID 19 hit, asking us to come for a face to face meeting. Did this mean anything? This focused me on thoughts of time. How much time is left? An answer none of us have.

I know I don’t have enough time left in my life to read every book I’d like to read and it doesn’t matter how long I live – this is unfortunately true. It is said that “Time stands still for no man.” But does it? Are our memories frozen in time or do we recreate them every time we recall them and therefore they are different on each recollection. Perhaps it is only our photographs that are frozen in time and will perhaps outlast our memories.

Is it dangerous to be stuck in time? We watched a Miss Marple movie the other night which was set in a hotel that was unchanged since Miss M had visited as a child some sixty years earlier. This unnerved her greatly and it gave me further food for thought on time. Time has to progress forward. Without moving forward we don’t experience growth, we don’t experience life.

Where does keeping time fit in. It is neither moving forward or stagnating. You might be asking is it possible to keep time. Absolutely and an essential at times such as in dance and musical renditions. Renee Conroy said ‘You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive.’ I love this quote almost as much as I love dancing but it did give me pause for yet more thought on time. Without evidence of time, even if you’ve kept time and felt alive, is your existence real.

Well I’m not going there. Those kinds of discussions I had in my youth and I’m not yet in a circle of time that has taken me to my second childhood.

We got our answer when we saw our haematologist. She has simply returned to face to face meetings as our lockdown has been relaxed (I think possibly she missed her normal income as well) and she had no idea that we had spent the time stressing. We had our appointment and learnt that this time we still have time on our side. Now we have to use it wisely. Neither of us hold with the adage “Live every day as if it’s your last.” Let’s face it – if it was my last day I am not going to do housework or any other humdrum task and these things have to be done. I prefer instead to attempt to make every moment matter and that is how I will be spending my time.