What Is Time and Does It Really Matter (yes, another Mom story)

Time! One of the governing factors of our lives is time, from minutes to years to decades and more. Sometimes we speak of time in general measure such as 'morning, afternoon, day, night, last week, next month, etc'. Sometimes we're more specific using a clock to mark the exact time something occurred. Regardless of whether we're talking in generalities or in specific, time is an important concept to understand... or is it?

The value of time is another subject altogether. We've all heard the saying "time is money". Different people place different values on time. Some people feel it is very important to be 'on-time' to an event, while others (who shall remain nameless) have never been on-time to anything in their lives and they're quite ok with that.

There's no great mystery here. Time and the value of time is relative to the individual. But imagine, if you can, that you had no concept or understanding of time. How would you live? How would you know when it's time to do anything. How would you feel if you didn't know how old you are. How would you feel if you didn't know when you got married, or when your child was born?

If you haven't figured it out yet, here comes a Mom story. I've known for a while that Mom was losing the concept of time. She still knows what an hours is, a day, a week, etc. but she has no concept of time spans. If something happened yesterday, it might as well have been 10 years ago. If you tell her on Monday that something is going to happen on Friday, she'll worry about it every day wondering if it's Friday yet. Today I had to take Mom to a lab to have some blood drawn for a test her eye doctor wanted. While we were sitting at the lab waiting, she asked me how long it had been since she lost sight in her left eye. I told her it had been 5 months. She gave me a funny look and emphatically proclaimed that she hadn't seen out of that eye for years. Now, in the grand scheme of things, does it really matter whether it's been 5 months or 5 years. In this particular case, no it doesn't.

This was a stark reminder that Mom is going away. You know how it is... you think you understand, you tell yourself that it's the alzheimers desease, you rationalize it in your own mind and then think you're prepared to deal with it. Well trust me, you can arm yourself with the cold hard facts but you're fooling yourself if you think that prepares you to watch your Mom disappear.