bringing down the house- they say time heals everything

Time was the explanation. Give her the time, they said. With words only spoken in ways you can’t capture not by a camera or to inscribe in a book or another location to replay at another time. No these words of give her time. Are transmitted through the looks of communication that you can only understand if you are paying attention. These words of time are spoken through the eyes. The look comes toward your own and the sense of acknowledgement that yes this sucks, yes we would rather be talking about anything else, and sorry all mixed into the perfection of the attempt at empathy.

Time. Time was all she had. Had been given. By me. By her. By him. By all of us. She had been given all the time in the world. To be someone else. To be herself. To be anything but who she was now? Because what she was now. Now she was nothing anything you would wish for anyone. Anyone at all. But especially not your mother. A mother who birthed you. Who loved you. Who fought for you. Now a stranger familiar only by blood and forgotten on purpose and remembered always memories.

I look at a picture of her. And can tell. She is telling a joke. Right then. But how? When my cousin purchases her cowboy boot slippers I laugh and speak as if I am speaking of a normal mother existence, mom will love those. The words come out easily as if any of this is easy. Because in time I have forgotten. That part of this wit. These funny bones I inherited. I inherited from her. Time we have given her. Her to be normal. But in time I had forgotten when she was. Was. And that she still can live inside of me. Even if it has been all the time in the world since I have seen her face. My own face. In her eyes. That I only have too. I forgot about my ability to remember. Remember things in a photographic way-the ability to remember how and when I met someone years ago, the transcript of life pulls quickly out the top of my head. That it was hers, it was hers first. Time can’t change that. Time hasn’t.

We have given her all the time in the world. To get the help. She needs. Help that none of us can give her. No matter how many degrees we get. Or how many lives we save. Breathing life into the others. So much easier. But your mother. My mother. Give her time, they say. But that is what we have always given her. Time. And now time has passed. Passed. That I am no longer the eighteen year old she last saw on that park bench budding with adulthood. For now I am an adult. And in adding up the years. You realize time is all she has. But time is what she has lost. Lost.

So this time. As every time. You hope it will be different. That she will in fact seek the help she really needs. Needs. Time can only explain so much. Time can only give us so much. We have to do something. Too. Ourselves. For me time allowed for me to walk and run and play and breathe life for myself. I had to forget about her most of the time. But never forever. Forever. Because I still hope that the help she needs, the help that time can provide her, the help that is possible can be hers. So that when we look back upon this story-my own story of my mother and me and everyone who has loved her-we can say she had more than time, she had finally found the answer.