Time is the most unrelenting enemy that any of us will face

By David McElroy · August 24, 2020

Cora often called to chat, so it wasn’t any big deal when I heard her voice on the phone in March. I was driving to work and we chatted for about five minutes. She reminded me that she wanted to take me out to dinner sometime.

As she was about to hang up, Cora said, “I love you. You’re such a good neighbor!” And I told her that I loved her, too.

Cora has been my neighbor for a bit more than five years. She’s a feisty and strong-willed black lady in her 70s who was a high school English teacher before she retired.

She’s always pestered me to find out about any women in my life. When she’s seen a woman at my house, she always wanted to know whether this is “the one,” and she was always disappointed when I told her otherwise. As she was about to leave my porch one time in May, she looked at me very seriously.

“I’m going to find a good-looking white girl for you,” she said. “I know a lot of rich and powerful white people, you know.”

She’s always seemed determined to find “a white girl” for me. But I found out tonight that this is very unlikely to ever happen. In fact, it’s unlikely I‘ll ever talk to Cora again.

About six or eight months ago, Cora had some sort of episode — we never knew what happened — that caused her to go walking through the neighborhood and then stop at a house of someone she didn’t know.

She had walked into the house of these strangers and had been very confused about where she was and how she had gotten there. She was in a hospital for a week or so after that. By the time she returned home, she was mostly back to normal.

In the coming weeks, she seemed to be doing better. She was tired and she wasn’t as physically active, but her mind was sharp.

Roughly two months ago, she felt good enough to take another trip — she traveled constantly to see family and friends — so she went to Texas for a visit. By the time she got back, something was wrong. Doctors suspect she had a couple of “mini-strokes” while on her trip. While she was in the hospital, she had a full-blown stroke.

I didn’t know about any of that until one of her daughters called to fill me in on it. She told me Cora was about to come back home, but because of the virus scare right now, we decided it would be best if I didn’t come see her.

Once she was better, things would return to normal. Or so we thought.

One of her sons brought me up to date about an hour ago. He was at her house cutting the grass and he stopped to give me the news when I got home.

Cora isn’t herself anymore and doctors doubt she ever will be. She doesn’t talk coherently now. She doesn’t seem to recognize her children. She requires full-time care and she has a feeding tube.

Three days ago — while I was at work — an ambulance took Cora away, but I didn’t know it. For now, she’s living about four hours from here — with one of her sons — in Mobile, Ala. Her son was talking to me tonight about the possibility of selling her house. Although they hope something might change, nobody expects her to ever live alone again.

They don’t believe there’s any chance Cora will ever return to the little house across the street.

As her son told me all this, I felt bad for Cora and I felt bad for what her eight children are going through. But I also felt a little stab in my heart for what this felt like for me.

I kept thinking about the fact that Cora and I had talked for close to two years about going out together sometime. We had settled on going to Cracker Barrel on a Sunday afternoon. She wanted it to be a Sunday because she would still be dressed up after church.

Several times we made plans about when we were going to go, but something always got in the way. She was more active in trying to pin a date down than I was. I wasn’t avoiding it, but I just never got around to firming something up.

The timing didn’t seem to matter. We could do it any time.

I’ll probably never get to go out with Cora now, and I bitterly regret that I wasn’t more diligent in making sure it happened. It was something I wanted to do, but I could always do it next week. Or the week after. Or next month. Or after this virus scare dies down.

And now I’ve waited too late.

Time is going to run out for every single one of us. It never feels that way. In fact, we live as though we we’ll be here for eternity.

We act as though we have forever to do the things we want to do. We live as though we have forever to love in the ways we say we want to. We seem to believe there’s always tomorrow to do the things that matter.

And as I look at Cora’s dark and empty house tonight, I’m faced with the reality that we don’t always have tomorrow.

We need to love the people we want to love. Right now. Not next month. Not next year. We need to love. We need to do the things that matter to us.

That’s not just advice for other people. That’s not just for older people. That’s for you and me, too.

Because before we know it, time is going to run out for us, too.

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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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