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On Time
In Tennessee, there are a few weeks out of every year in which the seasons do battle. Lately, I have been enjoying the spectacle these wars present from the third floor of the student center at a small, private college. Wherever the eye turns, the campus is surrounded by hills that are almost mountains. These tree-clad little mountains have been gently, almost imperceptibly touched with gold and orange over the past few weeks. They grow a little brighter and more autumn-like each day, yet summer refuses to relent. She continually strikes back with the ferocity of her heat. Autumn is a stealthy warrior, though. She sneaks quickly and quietly past summer’s defenses, noticed only by a few, and I feel privileged to be in her secret.
I love the subtleties of this exchange. I love the details, the little signs. Most of them go unnoticed, even by me, until the changes are complete. I do not see the first soft, Midas kisses of autumn on every leaf. If I watch very closely, I might observe it on a few. Soon, I know, I shall be living in a shining, golden world of the perfect climate, and I shall not remember clearly how I got there. An invigorating chill shall touch me in the morning, turning by midday into that temperature on which we do not comment because it is too right, too much in harmony with our impressions of how the world should be, to catch our attention. But the battle is over so quickly, and autumn always triumphs, though I do not know how. Every time I blink, I miss something.
These days are always my idea of paradise. I need no waving palms. Give me golden and crimson leaves dancing now riotously, now tenderly with the wind. Give me an unscathed, crystal clear blue sky. Give me mists in the morning. Give me stars.
And oh, what stars! They are seldom seen so brilliantly in Tennessee as at this time of year. All summer, humidity, that great oppressor, casts its shroud over them, and we look down, not up, at the ends of the sluggish, never-ending days. We Southerners can usually see the constellations only dimly, as through a hazed glass. But when cooler temperatures come and the air can hold less moisture, they come out. They shine thus all winter, but the night grows cold. We cease to watch them once the activity demands that we stand shivering. We give up our time with them – those silent, haunting, freezing nights – for the comfort of lesser fires.
It is raining today, and I expect it will continue for several days. Afterward, we will have that golden time. The skies will unveil the sun, but the air will be cooler. We will have two weeks or maybe three to drink it in. Groups of students from the college will invade Pocket – a nearby wilderness area with a river and a valley and a bluff – and hike as much as they can. Many will not think of how little time they have to do so. They will go because these days are perfect, but they will not go as much as they would if they only remembered that these days are numbered.
But I will remember. I will take my friends by the hands and bid them come with me. We will go together to enjoy these precious, living days. I will not just walk in the golden wilderness. I will climb the waterfalls and swim in the river and touch the warm bark of the trees and soak up the warmth of the rocks and the ground through bare feet while warmth can still be found. It will not be long.
I was there yesterday. We climbed all the way to the bluff called Buzzard’s Peak and looked out over the world, three friends and I. The namesake of those cliffs circled above us in great numbers. There were so many of them – dull-winged scavengers, the harbingers of death – and one red-tailed hawk. It was strange to watch that beautiful hawk sailing along among so many of its hideous kin. While the buzzards croaked, “Memento mori!” the hawk seemed to shriek, “Memento vivere!”
I looked out and threw my hands wide and felt the wind touch every invisible hair on my arms. I felt the warmth of the sun even through the clouds. The beauty of the place and the season was untarnished. The buzzards were an afterthought and easy enough to ignore. It was the rest of the place I had come for, and the rest remained. I knew it would pass. It would all pass at the last day. The mountains would be cast into the sea. But they lived now, and they sang, and the song would echo on forever. Would mine?
***
When I was eleven, Aunt Lisa, my daddy's sister, contracted leukemia. When I was twelve, she died.
Whenever we went to visit her in Kentucky, she always scooped me up in the warmest, plumpest hug imaginable. Sometimes it used to irritate me because I couldn’t catch my breath. But not after she got sick.
We went to visit her more often in that year than in the rest of my years combined, and when she hugged me, I hugged back with all the strength my little arms could muster. At first she seemed alright. Her hair was a little thinner. That was all. The next time she wore a scarf around her head. Her face was thinner. She had lost a lot of weight all over, and she was a bit jaundiced. Midas had kissed her like the leaves. But she was so beautiful. She got tired easily, but she still smiled. She still laughed, musically and often.
The next time we visited, she was gone. She was there, the doctors told us. But Lisa was not there. Her spirit was struggling toward heaven, and only one little corner of her mind remained. Yet they had told me she was still alive – that this was probably the last time I would get to see her alive. I was twelve, so I imagined miracles. I prayed hard. And I believed. I imagined the hug. It never came.
My mum and I stood at the threshold of the hospital room. She had already been in. She placed a hand on my shoulder as she turned the knob and whispered, “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.” I didn’t understand. I was appalled. How could I not want to? I was there either to say goodbye to my aunt or to watch God miraculously heal her. She was only forty. There was still time.
We stepped into the room. Aunt Sue was faithfully watching by Lisa’s bedside. She thought Lisa was there with her, and maybe she was in a way. But she was not in her body. Not fully. I walked up to the bed and stood frozen. I was too late, and I knew it. I would never hear her laugh again. She would never hug me as only she could do again. It was too late. There was no time.
Why had I wasted the summer of her life not loving her enough? Why did I only hug back once I read rumors of autumn in her face? Why do we forget to live until it is time for someone to die?
I didn’t cry in the room because part of me and all of Aunt Sue was still fighting to believe she could come back. I knew she could. Christ had raised Lazarus. He could raise my aunt. But I knew just as surely that He wouldn’t. Not this time.
As soon as we stepped outside, I broke down. Mum just held my hand for a few moments before saying, “Are you alright?” I nodded and wiped my eyes. I was fine. But my aunt was leaving, and I knew nothing of the place where she was going. The reality passed unspoken between us. We had just seen death living in my aunt’s body.
***
Aunt Lisa had set aside some things to give me. There was an amethyst ring, a turquoise necklace with two hearts on the pendant, and a rust-colored leaf brooch made of some kind of resin. The rest of her was somewhere else – somewhere I could not reach.
Again and again, every year, the leaves turn to rust like that brooch. The leaves are all the fading years leave us. A few rusty leaves floated down from the trees on the hike to Buzzard’s Peak, though many were still green.
We rushed on our way up, and we stopped and sunned ourselves when we got there. I remember the bare peak more clearly than the journey there. We didn’t pay as much attention getting there. But the journey begged to be our destination, and my heart felt the tug of the river’s song and the smell of the hemlock stands we passed through as much as it felt the sun on the rocks at the bluff.
We speak of heaven as the place where God reigns. But does He not reign here too? Does He not bring our years round and round and make everything speak to remind us? Does He remind us only that we are dying? Is all this life only a journey to heaven? And if it is, is it less important for that? Should we not still remember that our every brief motion is burdened with the weight of eternity? This is the battle-field. It is where things are determined. It is where we live, and there are beauties and glories and fragments of heaven here too.
The buzzards still circle the peak. I can see it, bare and golden in the sun, through the windows of the student center’s café on any clear day. I can hear their taunting cries: “Memento mori! Memento mori! You’re dying, you’re dying, you’re dying! You are nothing more than food for us. Your time is passing. It will soon be gone. To dust you will return.” But the hawk is somewhere up there too, singing his harsh, brave, joyous song. “Memento vivere! You’re living! You’re living! You’re living! You are young. Number your days. Count each one and ask if it was full enough of life. Be breathless. Be passionate. Love much. Live well. Redeem the time.”
