by Ellen Holtzblatt

When one has lived so long as to forget how long one has lived

Her strong hands squeeze mine with pain

Long bony fingers reach for soft folds and rhythmic breathing

She laughs like a tickled belly when he teases her

And then she exclaims, "I didn't know that!"

As her memory of that moment is lost in that moment

She dreams when she is awake, slouching in her wheelchair

And clutching her purse, she is ready to traverse the hologram

When one has lived so long as to forget how long one has lived

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We tend to think of time as being linear. We are born, age through childhood and adulthood, and eventually die. But all it takes is the sensation of a cool breeze against my bare arm and I am transported to the front yard of my childhood home in the cusp of spring, experiencing all the perceptions and emotions that I felt as a six-year-old child.

I think about my mom, who is now 101 years-old, and how she experiences time at this stage of her life. She sleeps on and off throughout her day, toggling between the realities of her physical sensations and her hidden world of dreams and imaginings. My mother cannot identify my sister and me in photos of us as children. She only knows us as we appear now, as though we emerged from her womb as fully formed adults with gray hair. She cannot remember what she had for lunch a minute after finishing her meal. She remembers the faces of people that she sees regularly, but has forgotten her nieces and nephews who live too far away to visit her. I brace myself for a day when she may forget my name.

My mother appears to be at peace. A lifelong plague of worries and obsessions has been replaced by the ease of not needing to know. She accepts her circumstances without question. Other people choose her outfits, her food, her activities, when she wakes and when she sleeps.

I acknowledge time, but it is different than the human construct of time with a beginning, a middle and an end. Time is fluid, and often connected to place. Time is the moment of being present in a space and time continuum, feeling all of the time lines simultaneously. And yet, there is no time.