Time. Flies. Time. Bandits. Time. Ends.

In which our Hero sometimes wonders what’s out there, somewhere over the wormhole

Guests on the weekend, friends of my mother. My mother has always been the most social of us, but the biggest view of that has got to have been the fact that she’s still in touch with this group of women who were all together in a dorm, back when they were in nursing school and then as they were just starting. Me, I barely keep in touch with the people from my last job. My mother is still talking regularly with friends from when she was still mostly just a girl.

A lot of them ended up in Canada, though scattered across a few cities. But they get together, and mostly they talk about kids and life and they laugh and laugh. It makes me happy to see them together, even though I want to run from my obligation to present myself.

But at lunch, I joined them again, and my first reaction was resigned outrage that my mother was dumping things on her friend’s plate. My mom does that, and I endure it, my cousins are resigned to it, but this is not a child. I swallowed the impulse to scold, and that was the right call because then I realized that, without any particular remark on it, my mother was feeding her friend.

The reason why didn’t become apparent till friend raised her hands above the table which allowed me to see her hands wave as the tremors shook them. It made me sad and want to help, but I was aware of her dignity and I could feel something from her husband next to her, that made me wonder how much her infirmity hit his pride too. But my mother has been feeding kids a long time, and was a trained nurse besides; she had matters well in hand. Her friend told me a story, between bites, the tone of her voice also carrying her tremors in a languid vibrato.

In its way it was a poignant moment, but not the sweet kind. I don’t know that either of them as twenty-somethings would ever have thought of a day when they were (cough)-year-olds who needed help to eat. And I can’t help but wonder what my mother was feeling as she fed her friend, if the weight of years was heavy on her shoulders.

Abandoned by my friend Hollywood, I had to take the bus to work today. Listening to podcasts as I went, I eventually hit the story of a guy who managed to get hit with Bell’s Palsy, just as he was staring a new job. Bell’s is usually temporary, passing with the treatment or just the end of the trigger condition. It’s seems to be an inflammation of a facial nerve, causing a loss of control of the face. In some extreme cases, it can prevent the eye from closing and pinch the face in a tortured smile.

He described the frustration of having a badge photo taken where his face was misshapen, of meeting people and saying “Nice to meet you” and knowing that they probably think he’s being sarcastic because of his expression. He talked about avoiding social situations, and being unable to receive the reassurance of his girlfriend.

If you’ve been reading me enough, Gentle Reader, you know I’m afflicted with a similarcondition. Not Bell’s, not temporary, and with three dispositions that all offer advantages and disadvantages. And as I was listening to this poor guy talking about the experience, I was laughing to his telling, and nodding along with his experience.

There are some things I think I’ve handled better than him. It doesn’t make me bitter or make me mean to people at the doctor’s office. And I just decided to make it part of my mystery. If people decide I’m being sarcastic, fine, whatever. Mostly nobody seems to object.

But one moment, one single heart beat between all the others, at the moment that he described realizing that he was past his affliction, and was smiling with his whole face again, I felt pain, and grief, and jealousy and anger. And relief. There’s a guy out there who understands bone deep what this feels like and I had a moment of connection with this strange relation. But he’s better, and I don’t get that. I don’t get my face back, I don’t get to be that me anymore. He’s gone.

He’s gone and for the length of a heartbeat I was utterly staggered by the depth of the knife’s-edge grief at his passing.