Day in and day out, Time and I watched them with a sweet
satisfaction, until one day we stopped.
We never discussed why we did so, but we were so pressed to move
on. Time always ran a few steps ahead of
me, looking back with a smirk on his face, and I would run after him. On each occasion when I thought I might
finally get a hold of him, he somehow slipped away again, laughing and
running. How I chased him back then in
those days of warmth when he had become such a beautiful man. I still remember.
But then the days grew darker, as they always do. My burden became heavier, and it was
difficult to carry. I asked my old
friend, Time, to help me, but he never would.
He was so spry and so strong, but he would not help. I should have been angry then, but his impish
behavior always made me laugh, so I carried the ever-increasing burden with me in
silence wherever I went. And I began to
walk a bit slower. No matter how Time
mocked me for what he called my laziness, I could go no faster.
The cold crept in slowly but steadily, and Time continued
to prod me. I grew weary of his constant
needs, his constant reminders, his constant busy schemes, but he never seemed
to notice, or if he did it was only with an attitude of irritation. Often, I would stop and rest for a while,
looking for the trees I knew so long ago.
But they were all gone, felled by a lumberjack one day after a secret
conversation he had with Time in a field near my house. They thought I couldn’t hear them, but they
were wrong. No matter, though. The trees had been gone for many years by
then.
So many days came without sunshine at all, and then came a
sudden day of death. All death seems
sudden, even when a person is waltzing with it for quite a while. I saw Time kiss the lips of my dying friend,
and his breath just ceased so quickly and easily. And I was angry! I screamed at Time, “You can’t take him from
me! Please!” But Time ignored me. Please….I
thought….take my breath instead. Kiss me instead. Kiss me, beautiful man, and take my breath
instead. Please….you can have it. Take all that I have and more. Just let my friend live again. Time did not appear to hear me, although
perhaps—perhaps—for the first time ever, he looked at me warily.
Our relationship changed then, although if I had been
honest with myself, it had been changing all along. I often felt an underlying current of anger,
and I would seek to hide from Time, to remove myself. No matter where I went though, no matter how
elaborate my plan, Time would always find me and chide me. “Pick up that burden!” he would yell with a
sneer, and I felt compelled to obey. No
matter how often I threw the burden down, when I turned around, it was always
somehow back on my shoulders again.
That went on for what seemed like a long while, but in
looking back it was the blink of an eye.
Each day, the burden grew heavier.
Each day, Time would order me to carry it. Often, I would rebel only to have Time sneer
at me again and whip me until I picked the burden back up. But then one day, I didn’t seem to pay
attention to the burden anymore. It was
just like any other part of me—like my hair or my hands or my smile. My burden was
me, and I found that while it was difficult sometimes, I didn’t mind it very
much at all anymore. From that day
forward, Time never sneered at me again.
He never ordered me around, and he never whipped me again either.
The hate that I had been secretly harboring for him, the
hate I never told him about because I was terrified of what he might do, seemed
to slowly evaporate until it was gone completely and seemed like just a dream
from long ago. A dream that was lost in
the passing of the years, hidden somewhere in the secret rustling places high
in the treetops of my youth, each leaf still calling me in my sleep.
And so I find myself now, walking here alone on a snowy path in
Maine, carrying my burden along proudly.
How I have come to love that burden!
That weight that cuts into my shoulders and makes them bleed, that
forces my feet to heavily scrape the Earth in pain, that sears my back like a
firebrand. How I have come now to love
and accept the pain the burden has brought me.
Each new tiny piece added to it carries a memory from my life of people
and things I have loved and lost, their faces rustling like leaves before my
eyes in the twilight of each day. And
still, we walk together, Time and I. He
leads me as craftily as ever.
Kiss me, beautiful man, and take my breath away. Take it quickly and easily like I have seen
you take all the others. You can have
it, I tell him. Take all that I have and
more. Just let me see the beautiful boy
from so long ago. Time laughs it off
when I say that to him, but we both know that someday he will do it. Then I will finally put my burden down, and I
will not pick it up again.
