The Long Blink - On the Folding of Time

We spend our youth convinced that time is a vast, unmapped continent. We measure it in the infinite stretch of summer afternoons and the agonizingly slow crawl toward the milestones of adulthood. We are rich in hours, spending them like pocket change because the vault seems bottomless.

Then, the math starts to change. You look back from the vantage of nearly five decades—or look ahead toward sixty—and realize the "long road" was actually just a series of rooms we passed through very quickly.

The Architecture of Memory

Childhood is built on a foundation of "forevers": the permanent scent of sun-warmed asphalt and the absolute certainty that the giants who raised us would never grow frail. But then one day we look back and realize that they're older; their joints are frail, and their gait is much slower.    That's when you know that the time behind you isn't coming back. 

But the true "death of innocence" isn’t a single event; it’s a quiet hand-off. It’s the moment we realize that the "grown-ups" we were waiting for were actually just us—stumbling through the dark, trying to keep the lanterns lit for those coming behind us.

The Sharp Edge of Honor

There is a specific kind of vertigo that comes with looking back. We call it "the passage of time," but sometimes it feels more like a collision.

I have learned that grief isn’t a cloud that eventually drifts away; it is a landmark. It is a knife with a very sharp edge that you find yourself bumping against, time and again, for years. I felt that edge most keenly when I sat beside my father as he drew his final breath. It was an agony I cannot put into words—a grief that cut deep and stayed open.

And yet, here is the messy, beautiful contradiction of being human: I would do it all over again without hesitation. To be the witness at the end of a life is a terrible, heavy honor. It is the moment where the years cease to be a number and becomes a single, sacred heartbeat.

The Bittersweet Folding

If you close your eyes, you can still feel the ghost of a bicycle handlebar against your palm. You can still hear a voice that has been silent for years as clearly as if they were in the next room. Life doesn’t feel like a marathon; it feels like a folding. Like a piece of paper creased so many times that the beginning and the end are finally touching.

We lose our innocence, yes. But in its place, we gain the strength to hold the hands of those we love as they step into whatever comes next. The "moment" was fleeting because it was light—it didn't weigh us down; it carried us here.