My Mother's Clock

Since college, day lilies have always marked true summer for me. 

The clock my mother gave to me 45 years ago to go to college with and keep me on time for 8:00am classes just stopped working. It began slowly enough this week, first being 15 minutes fast, then 30 minutes, then an hour, and finally gave up when it was 4 hours fast.

My mother's gift to me

This is the most difficult post for me, as Jim has started in the opposite direction. Our patient and gentle hospice nurse Sandra say he has entered the final phase of his life. It may be anywhere from 2 days to 2 weeks. And it is so goddamn hard to witness: the slow decline of such a strong, athletic, super-speed man was hard enough but hardest still is that the same thing that happened at my Dad's end of life, Jim now confronts. Two total geniuses: Dad (who I've written about before) and Jim who could solve so many complex problems from: fixing anything that broke; designing and building a device to transcribe and play old piano rolls onto midi or a modern piano or a computer; hand building musical instruments including a harp and then learning to play it; creating an imaging technology business that verified and prevented identity theft; to teaching blind teens from Florida to ski and board Vermont mountains; among many other amazing accomplishments. For both of these wonderful men, their livers simply gave out, poisoning their brains with confusion and a trying search for words. This is what is breaking me into bits right now—that my Jim is struggling with his mind. And yet at the same time, I do not want him to leave me.

Jim and his Charlie

My mother's clock, my father and husband's liver. Our life together.

Yet as if the circle of time wanted to drive home its presence, as Jim lies dying beside me, comforted by our pups, by Tegan, and my sister Mary, surrounded by your prayers, his new grandchild is being born. The heartbreaking beauty of it all. The old king dies and his heir is born. Night becomes day. Spring welcomes Summer. Summer begets Fall. Fall releases Winter.