The predictability to randomness.

 

Amidst the occasional fits and a usual behavioral change my uncle had still been very fond of his wife, perhaps way too dependent than he might have had been if he would have ever taken the responsibility of his actions.

It was not long before my aunt died of a disease that was not diagnosed soon enough. Unlikely to wonder how my uncle would react to the aftermath, we did realize that he had a sense of eeriness building inside him. Almost always worried about whether someone would actually care if he may die the other day, and if there is even one more person alive who did care for his health.

Perhaps it was pity and grief that lead me to my future self, because only about a week later, I was there at my uncle’s place asking if he needed something, we did chat about all his worries for a few hours, but it was clearly not enough, even he knew that I worked in the United States and would soon leave his side.

I do not recall the sequence to these events, but this was not something I would have had done under normal circumstances, this being an exception. I promised him that he could write me emails and me though with some hesitation did promise to write back.
I need more predictability to my randomness. An order to these events.

It has been one month since he started writing me emails. He tells me that he writes these emails during nighttime, but sends it only in the morning. With some exceptions, though, like when he felt too ashamed to share a memory, or that other day when he overslept.
On days that he would not write, I make sure that I call him, and ask him about his health and everything that I know I should. He likes this, our occasional conversations on the phone I bought him is his new favorite thing.

He writes me of times when he was young and of his friends and the life which were once his. Each time ending his emails with his own ways to express his gratitude for my attitude towards these letters. I for once now realize that how nice it is to be someone who makes someone feel like himself.

Last night he had a little more to drink as an exclamatory prize, on his achievement of climbing a mountain on his own alongside a few of his friends. Honestly, the mountain is just some stones piled up with proper staircases to climb up, though for a man his age it was nothing normal, and so I admitted, equally worried about his downgrading health. He laughs of my concern by saying “Do not worry my dear for I will not die so soon, I for once will have the last laugh among my friends.”

Despite all that my life offers, I fear what time may bring. But until it is stable, in these letters of ours, each day, we exclaim of a new day, just as normal as any other.

“We live in time – it holds us and molds us – but I’ve never felt I understood it very well. And I’m not referring to theories about how it bends and doubles back, or may exist elsewhere in parallel versions. No, I mean ordinary, everyday time, which clocks and watches assure us passes regularly: tick-tock, click-clock. Is there anything more plausible than a second-hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time’s malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow it down; occasionally, it seems to go missing – until the eventual point when it really does go missing, never to return.”                                                                                                                                            -Julian Barnes.