The years don’t announce themselves; they slip past under cover.
As I sit here watching the last seconds of the day slip into night, I feel that peculiar ache of realizing how much life I’ve lived without even noticing it. I can still smile a little, and I do — particularly when I think back to the young man I once was and just how damn naïve he was. He thought the years would announce themselves, that they would thunder in their passing. That there would be some grand crescendo to mark that he was moving through something important.
In the stead of trumpets and kettle drums, the years slipped by quietly, disguised as ordinary days. I traded them for work and whiskey, for ambition and distraction, for a thousand small preoccupations that felt like purpose at the time. I thought I was living, but I was only passing through. I can’t recall half of what I chased, but I can remember what I missed — the sound of laughter in another room, the weight of someone’s hand on mine, the peace of being still.
Now I feel the seconds like a pulse in my throat, steady but slowing. There’s a humility in that — in realizing how much of life I mistook for waiting. I want to believe I did the best I could, but even that sounds like an old man’s excuse. What I know for certain now: time is fading beside me, and I can’t ask it for more. All I can do is sit with it awhile longer, keep it company as it learns how to die.
8 responses to “Killing Time”
So beautiful 🤩
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Thank you very much.
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It blows me away when people can use words to turn ordinary situations into something profound.
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Thank you. I think the ordinary does most of the work. I hope I’m just getting a little better at not getting in its way. I appreciate your comment.
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Remarkable ending, even though it’s sad. When we give things new descriptions it changes impact and meaning and I find that process lovely. Perspective can challenge our minds a little bit.
Something I learned from you actually is these thoughts and feelings only come as we age. It is fascinating to me that we have never come up with a way to communicate to younger people how they will feel about life passing and life in the moment in a way so they can understand.
I wonder about those little preoccupations and distractions we fill our lives with and the goals or or projects we involve ourselves in is our way of not looking directly into the pain and suffering of life. Fear and sadness can hinder life movement and alter decisions and maybe it’s our way of avoiding. I guess the question is ‘is it inevitable?’
Maybe we start looking at life in hindsight with the eyes of a life lived and not a life missed.
I read your other commenter above and it made me smile. You have a gift my dear Wyatt. ❤️
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That’s beautifully put. It’s a lovely comment thank you. I do try to gently convey this to my kids and, interestingly, the more I do the more I can clearly recall my great grandparents also trying (and failing) to convey it to me. I can almost still see the disappointment in their eyes that I couldn’t get it – resignation may be the better word. I fear eyes have to be of a certain age to see it. I suspect we fill our days the way we do to stay in motion and occupied until we’re strong enough to look straight at the pain. Hindsight may not be kinder, but it is clearer and carries the emotional residue of age. I appreciate you reading so closely as always.
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And maybe that is the last mercy time offers us, not endlessness, but presence. The chance to notice the weight of a breath, the quiet dignity of moments passing, and to love what remains without trying to save it. Wonderful, beautiful and sad.
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I like that phrasing: to love what remains without trying to save it. That feels true to the piece. Presence may be the last honest gift time gives us… not to rescue the moment, but to inhabit it fully. I guess when you start feeling like you have an ever diminishing number of those moments – you’d better learn to inhabit them fully. Thank you for seeing my meaning.
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