4 AM- An essay on Mortality

It is my favorite hour of the day, the hour of solitude and ownership. The hour out of 24 that I have found just for me. By five, alarms are going off, the pipes are rattling with showers. But 4 AM is mine. The sky is still dark and many have just fallen into their deepest slumber of the previous evening. But for me, I am most awake, more awake than I shall be all day.

As the aroma of the coffee soothes me, the intermittent whoosh of the heater warms my body, I sit, and listen. I don’t do this enough, just sit; and listen. But it is a practice I am enjoying more and more these winter days.. First the wee morning hour and sounds invite me into my big cozy chair; well, truth be told, it is my husband's ugly brown recliner. The recliner that has become one of our married battles as it just does not go with my decor at all; yet I secretly don’t know what I would do without it if it weren’t here to welcome me every morning. My coffee, always black, “tar” my family tells me, is steaming in my cup next to me, I pull the well-worn cashmere throw across my legs and recline just slightly. Then, I listen. 

A funny thing happens when one just sits, and listens. Clarity comes out of the shadows. At least it does for me. Conundrums I feel are dead-end streets with no resolution will, during these listening exercises, appear as the most simple and obvious answer leaving me wondering why I spent hours and days and sometimes months in self-imposed turmoil over a situation. What, I wonder goes on in the backrooms of my brain? I envision little men with no time for a personality hunched over a long meeting table working hard to present to me the most concise solution to my anxiety-inducing worries. But something big has happened in my life that has me reconsidering how much time I want to give to these little men in my brain's back room. Well, two things have happened that feel big to me but in fact are common to so many if we live long enough.

 I have somehow managed to reach the impossible age of sixty. And my father, a leader of a man who has spent his entire adult life in service to our country and his community through his time in the Navy, Army reserves and as a Lieutenant in the Sheriff's department, has now been diagnosed with vascular dementia and he is fading before our eyes. TIME has been on my mind. Mostly, how very much I have wasted. 

 Sometimes the early morning brings quiet tears. This is one of those mornings. I am struck with the painful and sudden awareness that I have already lost irrevocable time with my dad. I can no longer have the conversations I kept putting off; it’s too late. I try, but he fades and responds to something we were not even talking about. Then, I watch as he falls asleep. My heart sinks as I can tangibly feel time slipping through my fingers like sand does when you pick it up at the ocean and you enjoy the slight tickle as it slips through your hands back to all eternity. I have never before been hit so hard with my own mortality. 

Simultaneously to my fathers diagnosis, I left my youth. Because I am young in spirit, my perhaps overly zealous and adventurous personality of my previous 50 years may have kept me what some tell me “Young for my age”. I still downhill ski, love a good mountain to hike, can’t resist a dance floor and try to be wise with my health. Yet there is no denying anymore that I am now on the lifespan spectrum as “old”. The number, as I bring my favorite pottery Snowbasin Ski Resort cup to my lips, is surreal and does not match what I always imagined “60” would feel like. Then I notice, I am enveloped in a wave of comfort and contentment, not panic. Even with my mortality looming large in front of me, I feel oddly at peace. This peace is time and my awareness of it. I think I am going to have to fire the little men in my brain. I thank you for your service but I'll take it from here! 

I have carried the psychoanalyst Erik Erikson's Theory on The Stages of Development with me since I first learned about it in college. Erikson has followed me around like Father Time himself. And now here I am in his 8th stage of “Integrity vs Despair”; looking back and questioning my life. Did I live it “right”? In the early morning hours sometimes all that did not come to fruition comes to the surface and laughs in my face. It tries to beat me down, tell me that I failed. But it doesn't last. The strength that comes from making it 60 years on this earth wins. For while time passes, it really stands still. Life , when one considers it, is merely a series of “todays”. Yesterday was today and tomorrow will be today, if we are so lucky. And this epiphany at the age of 60, brings me a semblance of peace. 

Time, or its awareness of it, makes life count. This we know. But at 4 am in my husband's ugly recliner sipping on my steaming “tar”, I really know it. 

About 30 minutes into my sanctuary hour, I hear the first awakening; a chirp. Just one, but clearly the bell-ringer for the day as within moments, my yard is a symphony. It is then that I sit and listen again. I embrace the present time I am given and I am taught that time is my friend and that I have in fact been reckless with it most of my life. But at 4 am; I am not reckless, I am present and peaceful. I embrace the memories that are my life. I understand I am on this journey with my father and that old age, in whatever form it presents itself is meant to be valued as much as our first tooth and first love. 

As I hear the muffled sound of the shower upstairs, I am abruptly aware that I am now sharing time with my husband getting ready for his day. I know that I will have to wait until tomorrow to embrace my special hour. And while I wait, I enter into the day appreciating it for the gift that it is. I understand this now, all because I found 4 AM for me.