Gone

2016? Gone, just like that. Before I can get used to the new year last year, another year came knocking at my door. Look, it’s the third day of this new year already, can you believe that? In the world where the passing of time is defined by seasons, time passes quickly even more. Seasons overlap each other and before you know another year had passed. I don’t know if it’s true for others but for me the more I get older the more time flies, zooming by before I can even say hello.

Yet some memories are fresh as if they just happened yesterday. I saw online a girl who is in her second year of studying architecture, I can’t believe she’s the same girl who was a new born baby the last time I saw her. Her brothers who were toddlers then are now married and having toddlers of their own. Am I really that old?

There were events that I thought fairly recent but when I checked the actual dates came to realized that they happened 18 -25 years ago. I look at pictures and to me they are not old, they are part of my present, part of who I am now and will continue to be so for the years to come. How can they be old when I still feel the same?

George Michael is dead. David Bowie is gone. Michael Jackson is no more. Carrie Fisher just passed away. So many people who were part of my youth celebrities and non celebrities alike are no longer with us. A little while longer and there will be nobody left anymore to remind me of the 80’s -my 80’s which I thought the best era for everything, not only music.

Ah, I think I’m being sentimental, nostalgic; sign of getting old they say. But I can’t help but mourn the lost of so many things and people to which/whom I can relate to. And that includes morals and values, honesty and sincerity, respect and dignity, honor and integrity, tolerance and harmony. Too many to mention.

A quote from Horace Mann came unbidden to mind:

“Lost – yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever.”

Isn’t time the most precious commodity we have?