I awoke at 3:00 a.m. on Valentine’s Day, a few days after reading Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time. In my half-asleep state, the mind-twisting concepts of Time from the book intermingled with images of my father; they demanded to be written down. “Now?”  I said aloud to my muse, greedy for more sleep. But the images were compelling, so I reached for my laptop (if I had to write this down, there was no way I was going to have to decipher my handwriting later).

For a solid hour, I sat up in bed remembering, typing, weeping. In my memories of childhood, the images appeared in crisp black-and-white, but as I approached the hours near my father’s dying, I saw shades of gray. Neither here nor there. No longer of this world, but not yet departed. A state of liminality.

Later in the day, I would inadvertently delete the poem my muse had guided me to write, but I was able to conjure up most of it again. In honor of my father, whose 97^th birthday will be Sunday, I share it with you now, Dear Reader:

Relativity

Time moves strangely

In the nursing home,

Bending, curving, slowing

Around the gravity

Of my father’s dying.

I sit in the stillness,

Watch his graying face,

Feed him ice chips.

He studies me, then says

With a conspirator’s wink,

“I think I can beat this.”

I wisecrack through tears,

“The House has the advantage, Dad.”

He sinks into his pillows,

Draws a long breath and muses,

“Yes, the House always wins.”

Time twists and morphs,

Spinning wildly backward

Until I am a little girl

Holding his hands,

My white Mary Janes

On his black dress Oxfords

As he teaches me to waltz

At the daddy-daughter dance.

Time stands still in his eyes

As he smiles down at me,

My face gazing up at his.

I will always be

His Belle of the Ball.

In another instant

I am sixteen, and my father

Sits in the passenger seat,

Wordless as I stomp the brake

To avoid hitting a tree.

“Dad, I’m so sorry!”

I panic, “What do I do?”

He nods and says calmly,

“Now put it in reverse…”

Quivering like heat

Rising from a highway,

Time shimmers, then parts—

I stand in my white dress,

He in the only tux

He has ever worn.

I take his arm

As he whispers words

That make me laugh and cry

As we step down the aisle.

Through a tiny wormhole

We emerge in the NICU

Where he holds my newborn preemie.

I have never seen him

Look so terrified,

As if his large, gentle hands

Might break this fragile creature.

Again, Time telescopes until

I am back at his bedside

Stroking his aging arm.

Nearly fifty million minutes

Have been his to hold,

But now he is tired,

His body yielding, though

His mind wants to linger

Just one more day,

One more hour.

So hard to let go

Of a life well lived.

“It’s all right, Dad,” I sigh.

“You’ve played a great hand.

But it’s OK to fold.”

His eyes are closed,

But in the gray light

He smiles for me

One last time.

Until next time,