Another “Last Time”

“What if that was the last time I saw her?” 

The following piece is about this very question that plagues the narrator’s mind. Her time is coming, and she knows it. She wants the best of both worlds; for her grandmother to outlive her failing physical health, and for her to be at peace after decades of the sunrises and sunsets she’s witnessed. Time reminds her, however, that it waits for no one. 

As I held her tender, wrinkled skin, I looked into the distance. 

It was there. The entity looked back at me, the same expression of nothingness as it tapped its wrist watch with just a finger. 

“There isn’t much time.” it told me. But no one else heard it. 

I know I wasn't hallucinating or anything, but I definitely heard it. I knew it lingered. It was doing this on purpose. 

I felt its presence when I sat in the front seat of the car on my way to her house. Mom would drive, and I'd be the only one in the car with her, but there was always a secret passenger on board. A messenger. 

It was Time itself. 

Time, that I knew was limited. 

Time, who I knew would stop visiting after it happened. After the day I would never get to hold her tender hands in mine again.

But until then, Time is the third passenger in the car as I drive up to her house. And it is the very same Time whose ears I know ring every time she sings me a song she learnt when she was little. Time observes. Time hears. Time knows. 

And still, says nothing. Nothing to stop the thing we both know is inevitable. But I remain cross with Time. Well, who wouldn’t? 

I think it’s both beautiful and ever so slightly desperate that I'm hopeful - hopeful that the last time I see her will always be preceded by another last time. And another last time after that. 

And it’s during these moments, when the clouds seem to linger a little longer in the sky than sunlight, that Time reminds me, that it’s just a couple of last times now. 

it’s not that I ever want it to be the last time. I just know that the number of last times I have is counting downwards. 

And I just used one…yesterday. It’s on the record. 

And every time I come back home, I don't know how many I have left. 

But I do know one thing. That it would be nice. To have just another last time.