For One More Day

There have been many times in my life when I wished for more time.  Time is like the missing mate to the sock that always ends up in the dryer; once it’s gone it never comes back and no matter how hard you search for it you always come up empty-handed.  I’ve spent so much of my life trying to control time; sometimes I feel like I’m hanging on the edge of the minute hand with my heels dug into the ground trying to slow it down.  Time changes as you grow older,  not how quickly or slowly it passes but the meaning it has in your life.  When I was a kid time couldn’t move fast enough.  I was always wishing I was older, wishing my parents would stay away longer, wishing weekends went slower, and hoping at some point my parents would forget how to tell it especially when it came to curfews.  I guess it’s true what they say, “Don’t wish your life away.”  Time cannot be controlled and that in itself causes us humans to try even harder to change that fact.

Since my dad passed I have wished for one more day.  One more day to tell him I love him, one more day to pick up the phone when he called instead of letting voicemail pick up because I was too busy, one more day to thank him for never giving up on me, one more day to memorize every line in his face so that I could remember them always, one more day to tell him how sorry I was that I didn’t fight harder to keep him here with me.  Wishing for more time is so entangled with ‘What if’s’ that sometimes it’s hard to tell where time stops and regret begins.

For One More Day I would give up all the time I’ve wasted on things less important.  I cannot control time anymore than I can control the sun or the moon.  What I can control is making sure I never end up in this place again, wishing for one more day.