It's About Time

We are at the oncology center. The sound system is schizophrenic, sometimes playing pure muzak, occasionally light pop tunes, but at the moment it is some dreamy new age vibe. Women patients outnumber the men, seven to two. Today is the first day of a new chemo cycle. Usually, Faina starts to feel the discomfort within the first few hours, generally a painful tingling in the finger. It builds over the first few days, peaks, and leaves her feeling "toxic" or "poisoned" for about a week. I look forward to that second week, especially the last days when Faina's energy level is higher. We did not get much of a bump last week, but she did enjoy a drive and running a few errands. She did bravely venture into direct nutrition, some yogurt, chicken soup, oatmeal, rice. Visualize about two tablespoons as a meal every two hours. She eats and then sits for at least 30 minutes letting it work its way, uncomfortably, through her system. Understood as reward vs. punishment, it is a punishing experience, but Faina hopes to get off of TPN some day and so she endures.

The time we spend together is precious. Looking at the hours that we are in doctors' offices, in clinics, in traffic, reading, watching TV-movies-news, reading, and in quiet repose, I wonder about this concept we have for fixing events in sequence and duration.

The first place I like to turn to for a point of reference is in sacred text, pursuing a Biblical view of time. Obstacles are translation/interpretation and our cultural understanding of this construct. While one translation renders a phrase in Bereshit/Genesis 1:14 as "sacred times,"a more faithful reading is more specific "festivals, days, and years." A verse appearing, a few chapters later, is regularly related as, "In the course of time" (4:3). A more accurate reading is "It was the end of days" (in the sense of the end of an era). One other example calls Noah (6:9) "blameless in his time" while a more literal understanding is "faultless in his generation" (6:9). One of the last mentions of "time" in the Torah, "a long time" (Devarim 20:19) is really "yamim rabbim" (many days). This gives a sense that the term "time"  is casually and imprecisely used to to stand for anything ranging, based on these examples, from a milestone monent, the period of one revolution of the earth, on to many revolutions of the sun. My account covers "time" based on those terms, but really how could it not, so it is time to find another sponsor.

My favorite philosopher, Martin Heidegger writes, "The Being of time is the 'now'." This is how time is best experienced, in the immediate moment. He goes on to say that "'now' ... is-no-longer ... (and) ...is-not-yet." This strikes me as the great challenge of all-time and especially era in which we live. Do we diminish the "now" with the imposition of the past and the future? Does our hyperkinetic 21st century society make living in the "now" an old fashioned artifact or does it just add degrees of difficulty to achieving that state of Being? I'll take this as a challenge to really mean it when I say, "I'm here for you." It is a V'Ahavta'esque "B'chol livavcha, u'vchol nafshicha, u'vchol m'odecha" (with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might) being present.

Time to go. There is tea to be brewed, a hand to hold, and a presence to be experienced.