In the early 2000’s, my mom developed severe intestinal bleeding that required taking her to the ER. I was visiting her in Texas; it was late December. She was admitted to the hospital on Christmas Eve.

On Christmas morning, my dad, sister and I drove to the hospital to see mom. We arrived about 8 AM. I knew something was off — Mom had this stricken look on her face. A surgeon appeared, wearing huge cowboy boots. He explained that a large part of mom’s colon needed to be removed. She was hemorrhaging badly.

The surgery required many hours; that afternoon she was moved to the Recovery room. The hospital staff allowed us to stay near her bedside. Periodically, mom would awaken and lift her head, peer around the room then look at me. She would whisper, “I can’t believe it’s Christmas…” then pass out.

This scenario — waking, looking around, saying “I can’t believe it’s Christmas” then passing out — repeated itself often, perhaps seven or eight times. It was as if mom couldn’t understand the juxtaposition of “surgery” and “Christmas morning.”

At the time, I thought it was funny — then kind of tragic — then funny again — then perplexing that she would return to the same awareness and repeat the same thing:

I can’t believe it’s Christmas.

She was in her early 60s at the time. She is now 82. I am 60 years old and will turn 61 in a few weeks. 

I find myself repeating things about the passing of time… all the time. “I can’t believe it’s Fall.” “I can’t believe it’s time to do our income taxes again.” “I can’t believe the semester is ending.” “I can’t believe the holidays are here.”

I wish I could explain what is going though our heads. I feel as if I am suspended between Understanding and Not Understanding.

One minute I was in my late 30s and planning to move to Sonoma County. But then in a dizzying whoosh I’m suddenly in my 60s and figuring out my retirement plans. Retirement!

But these awarenesses are nothing new. The great Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote in his notebooks more than 2,000 years ago: “Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.”

Perhaps we’re expecting too much of ourselves. Can anyone live their life while also being outside time and consciously marking the hours and days of it? Sure, some of us spend a lot of time reflecting on the human condition. But I’m not sure my fascination with the questions of life is the same mechanism that could keep me aware of time while I’m making my way through it.

How did my 30s become my 60s? I remember going to the gym four times/week and having a body that was kind of amazing. I was 34 years old. But now, after a shower I look at myself and see a shock in the mirror: I have my father’s body. I have a belly; my hair has thinned to nothing.

How could I have become This Current Me? I feel as if I should know and yet am perplexed as to how it happened.

I think back to when I was 40. I watch my mother lift her head from the hospital bed to peer at me with such incomprehension. All these years later I hear her voice, as if she is saying it this very second: I can’t believe it’s Christmas.

Then she lowers her head. She looks up at the ceiling of that hospital room. She’s lost. She cannot figure it out.