And suddenly we lived in two completely different worlds; not bad worlds, but the kind of worlds that clashed, the kind that observers would never expect to see eye to eye. He was always in that rugged old chair down in the basement that sat propped against the wall with his nose in the same book he always read. He was only able to read it by the light on the tiny lamp that unsteadily lay on the table adjacent to him. He only ever looked up if his glasses started to fall, or if I called him for dinner where he would sit at the table in silence and pick at his food while his mind was consumed by the same book that had been glued to his hands for four months. Whenever I asked him about this item that seemed to take over his life, he would simply give me his little halfhearted smile and say,”My love, the theory of making theories is complex, but the theory of time is everything.” He spent days on end in that chair jotting down notes, solving extensive math problems, and only falling asleep for the slightest bit of time before waking up continuing to his work. I never understood how one could spend so much time studying a book that came from the ideas of someone else’s mind to determine the theories of life.
But it didn’t used to be like this. The two of us would wake up on a random Sunday morning and the next thing we knew, we were on an airplane traveling to the ends of the earth with 3 days worth of clothes and only enough money that was needed to have an adventure. From the tops of mountains to underground tunnels, we obtained our life theories through the world, through our observations. There was no such book to take the theory making time away from us. I could remember a time when he looked at the world and he looked at me with the same eyes of intensity and admiration that he began to use to look at that book. I missed these times, while I ran wifely errands, cleaned the house and waited for the returned companionship of my exploring partner. And then finally one day, he came to me as I folded laundry and hummed an Italian tune I had heard on our trip to Naples. The book was not in his grasp and I was finally convinced that he still had the ability to walk after believing he had lost that talent during his four months of sitting. He grabbed my hand, looked into my eyes and said what I had longed to hear for a very long time.
“Tomorrow, how does a trip to Budapest sound?” I spent the evening packing our newly folded laundry into suitcases small enough to fit under the seat of the airplane that I had grown accustom to, and struggled to sleep that night as excitement filled my veins. When I awoke the next morning, he was not lying next to me. I walked out of the bedroom hoping to find him in the kitchen, but when I discovered he wasn’t there, I knew exactly where to look. Down the winding stairs I rarely walked, I spotted a faint light; the light of the old lamp next to his ratty old chair. And there I found him, book on the floor, arm lifelessly draped over the edge of the chair, and a line of blood down the right half of his chin. My vision turned blurry from shock and tears as I lunged toward him and wept on his stomach that lacked a heartbeat. I noticed the book, crushed under my knee, and I reached for it. The cover of the book read,”Coronary Artery Disease; Surviving Your Illness” Confused, I flipped through the pages and found notes written by him on each one, each seeming more and more like a bucket list as I read on.
“Take 3 pills a day”
“6 more months left”
“Take her to Budapest”
“Create one last theory of life with her”
“Tell her I love her one last time”
Some would say that the book took over his life. Some would say it was the disease. But what truly ended his life of adventure was fear. He feared the end and planned extensively so that he wouldn’t have to. And in that moment, as my tears wet the pages his fingers had brushed over many times before, I realized that the only theory of life that was important to all of man kind was; Everything has a time limit. You can chose to use the time you have planning the day it will end and dreading the moment it does, or enjoying every minute of it until a new time limit begins. And that was how I chose to live mine.