Time.

There’s never enough, is there?

We try to box it up neatly, let it play quietly as the background track of our lives.

Sometimes, we abuse it. There’s always somewhere to be, an issue to debate, important tasks to complete.

We hurry to be first. We scramble to keep up. We maintain a pace that’s unrelenting as we work, raise our families, try to better our communities.

Too often, we take it for granted. There’s plenty of time, we reason in our younger days, to do those other things…later.

But.

Time keeps a brisk tempo we try desperately to ignore.

Until eventually, it stalls.

If we’re lucky, we grow old. Bodies betray the youth we once took for granted. Skin thins to delicate parchment stretched across tired veins, aching bones. Muscles lose the strength they once provided so ably and automatically. A disorienting fog floats over consciousness leaving it muddled, strangely heavy.

Aging is a privilege some ache bitterly to experience, but it's fraught with pain amidst joy—for both the aging and those a generation or two removed from its leading edge.

It’s hard to watch the steady decline of those you love, to see them losing bits of themselves as the rest of the world carries on, oblivious.

Selfishly, we yearn for more time, for old times.

It won’t come, not on this earth.

And so.

We treasure the here and now, when precious moments are still possible to steal. We close our eyes and breathe in the beautiful symphony of a life well lived. We take comfort in its enduring legacy of love.

Until one day, a dear heart yields gently to time—and its echoes become the steady backbeat of our own.